Apple dismantles Claris

Apple this afternoon announced plans to strip its profitable Claris Corp. software subsidiary of most of its products as well as its name, and to lay off 300 employees.

The newly christened FileMaker Inc. will retain only FileMaker Pro, Claris' popular database package. Retail versions of Mac OS 8 and the ClarisWorks productivity suite will return to Apple, the company said.

According to sources, Apple had in recent weeks attempted to sell FileMaker to a number of database developers, including Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp.

The fate of other Claris packages, including the newly shipped Home Page 3.0 and the company's Emailer package, remained unclear; the death of Emailer has been rumored for weeks.

Founded in 1987 as an Apple software subsidiary, Claris has had a back-and-forth relationship with its corporate parent. Executives planned to take Claris public in 1990, but the effort was halted by Apple.

Claris has always supported Apple's bottom line. In October 1997 the company reported sales of $91.1 million for its fourth fiscal quarter, as well as record revenue for the year.