Wong Finding Encore to AST Success Elusive : Entrepreneur: PC industry price war has forced him to pare staff, operations to the bone at his Irvine start-up, Amkly Systems Inc.

IRVINE — Albert Wong--the original A of AST Research Inc.--has been unable to repeat his success since leaving the Fortune 500 computer maker in 1988.

A Darwinian price war in the computer industry and the lingering recession have forced Wong to lay off most of his 40 employees and significantly reduce operations at his start-up computer company, Amkly Systems Inc. in Irvine.

Wong said he reduced his staff to eight people to be able to compete in the PC industry’s intense price war. But he said that his 4-year-old company is not for sale and that he has not yet given up.

He confirmed in an interview Monday that the company ceased most of its operations in October, leaving only a skeleton crew to sell off inventory and support current customers.

“I’m not shutting it down,” Wong said. “I’m running it thin to try to get through this trough in the computer industry. We have a good product line, but it’s getting very difficult with all the price cuts.”

Dozens of other computer makers have exited the business in the past year, which has been marked by a series of price reductions started last May by industry leader Compaq Computer Corp. Industry observers expect the shakeout of weaker players to continue over the next 18 months.

Wong said he invested about $10 million of his fortune from AST in the enterprise he founded in 1989. He said he did not lose the entire investment in Amkly, but he acknowledged that he should have cut back sooner to stem losses.

“It was prudent to cut back,” he said. “It was sliding downward, and I had to stop it. I am going to try to rebuild. But I have to rethink how to succeed in the PC business. Right now it is hard.”

Wong left AST in November, 1988, in a dispute with his partners, Tom Yuen and Safi Qureshey. Yuen left in June of this year after an apparent power struggle with Qureshey.

Wong was known as the technical wizard of the trio that started AST in 1980. He sought to duplicate his success by launching a line of technically superior personal computers for specialized computer dealers who packaged their own software with the PCs.

In April, 1991, Amkly introduced computers with a modular architecture that could be upgraded to meet a customer’s technological requirements and such features as built-in security for computer data.

But Amkly faltered as the pricing gap closed between so-called clone makers’ products and name-brand computers from several thousand dollars each to several hundred. Customers are less likely to pay higher prices for the features of Amkly PCs, especially if they can get similarly priced name-brand products.

Computer industry observers say Wong’s company was too small to succeed. It did not have the economies of scale needed to compete against the larger computer makers, nor the marketing and engineering clout to stay ahead.

Wong’s troubles were the subject of much gossip and concern at a party for the alumni of AST over the weekend. His absence at the elegant event was conspicuous but not unexpected, guests said.

Like his former college roommate, Yuen, Wong was born in Hong Kong and moved to the United States in the 1970s to attend college. He received an electrical engineering degree from Cal State Fullerton and worked as a design engineer at Datum Inc. in Anaheim before founding AST.