Pinnacle latest to sever links with Principal

The exodus of vendors from Principal Distribution to arch-rival Computers Unlimited (CU) continued last week as Pinnacle Systems terminated its contract with the North Yorkshire Macintosh specialist.

The announcement that Pinnacle had canned Principal came just a week after the software video-editing vendor appointed CU to supply its Miro and Studio range to the digital professional market.

Ashley Winfield, sales manager at Pinnacle, confirmed to PC Dealer that Principal's contract would not be renewed when it expires on 1 July.

'Continuity of supply is essential and we had to move when the time was right. CU is very aware of our core market and has influence and expertise, which we welcome,' he pointed out.

Rod McMillan, chairman of Principal, said: 'I haven't been informed by Pinnacle of any decision, but I understand it is planning to do something.

It won't cause us too many problems as we've been exploring other opportunities in this field.'

He claimed Principal was in discussions with other vendors in the market, adding that an announcement would be made shortly.

The decision to axe Principal, after serving as a distributor for Pinnacle for the past three years, comes in the wake of the loss of the Symantec distribution contract.

As exclusively revealed in PC Dealer (9 June), Principal is suing CU and its business development director Alan Clarke after its competitor secured the exclusive contract to distribute Symantec products to the Macintosh market in March.

Principal alleges that its former sales director Clarke was in breach of his termination agreement with Principal by joining CU and becoming the 'driving force' behind Symantec's decision to switch to CU.