UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards
Posted: September 17th, 2021, 11:09 pm
This is an interesting little story of how things were done in the early days of the retail computers and how Amstrad dominated the UK computer market after Sinclair got into financial trouble and Lord Sugar bought all the Sinclair Intellectual property.
For those who do not know the story, Clive Sinclair was one of the first folk to bring electronic devices like calculators to the masses. His calculators were often not as fast as Japanese competition, but he sold a lot of stuff and finally became so focused on the tech that he lost control of the financials.
Seems almost like a fairy tale compared to the social media days that we all now know with near instant communication and the likelyhood of keeping things confidential as was done then now small.
https://www.amshold.com/social_media/th ... _story.htm
Once Amstrad had removed this competitor they began a huge expansion, offering machines at about 1/5th the price of US competitors with Lord Sugar using components that were the cheapest he could find. Around this time Lord Sugar bought Spurs football club and was distracted by the problems there. This all went wrong when Amstrad bought a load of hard drives from Seagate and Western Digital with all of them failing in the field. Amstrad sued both hard drive makers, got a good settlement from Seagate but got nothing from Western Digital when the jury sided with Western Digital.
Some have suggested that if this had not happened that Amstrad would now be comparable to Apple in turnover. Personally I doubt it as Amstrad was always considered cheap whereas Apple were always focused on a quality experience, at least according to their PR, whilst with Amstrad it was usually price, price, price, but who knows what might have happened.
In the end Amstrad was sold to Sky and perhaps some of the ethos of Amstrad is still in Sky hardware.
There is now far more competition and money for developing new technologies into consumer products in a market that is (was?) dominated by Silicon Valley where the vast wealth has spawned many angels who are prepared to invest in ideas and people. Whether this is how things will happen in the future is being challenged by the move to cyber space where investors, capital and inventors can be anywhere with strong sectors in China and India. One can now have an idea, commission someone found on the internet to design what ever you want and then have some other outfit make the device from the PCB through to a commercial product. Even this is now challenged as more and more manufacturing kit drops in price so that high wage countries can now offer competitive prices. Adafruit based in New York being an example of how one person (Last Ada) has overcome the supposed cost advantage of places like China. Even the price advantage is falling and Sandy Munroe argues that there is no Chinese low cost advantage compared to the States and although Tesla are not selling as many Tesla in China as they were, the market for these sophisticated and relatively expensive machines is buoyant in China.
Some have called the 21st century the age of gearing, where there are a great supply of folk to produce what someone wants to sell creating a gearing of idea to production and then a gearing of capital from small to large via a percentage sales going back into making more widgets. These abilities have driven down the cost of everything as manufacturing is now much cheaper and there is soon lots of competition so the idea is to flog as much as possible at a low price and low margins to make it hard for competitors to move in.
Regards,
For those who do not know the story, Clive Sinclair was one of the first folk to bring electronic devices like calculators to the masses. His calculators were often not as fast as Japanese competition, but he sold a lot of stuff and finally became so focused on the tech that he lost control of the financials.
Seems almost like a fairy tale compared to the social media days that we all now know with near instant communication and the likelyhood of keeping things confidential as was done then now small.
https://www.amshold.com/social_media/th ... _story.htm
Once Amstrad had removed this competitor they began a huge expansion, offering machines at about 1/5th the price of US competitors with Lord Sugar using components that were the cheapest he could find. Around this time Lord Sugar bought Spurs football club and was distracted by the problems there. This all went wrong when Amstrad bought a load of hard drives from Seagate and Western Digital with all of them failing in the field. Amstrad sued both hard drive makers, got a good settlement from Seagate but got nothing from Western Digital when the jury sided with Western Digital.
Some have suggested that if this had not happened that Amstrad would now be comparable to Apple in turnover. Personally I doubt it as Amstrad was always considered cheap whereas Apple were always focused on a quality experience, at least according to their PR, whilst with Amstrad it was usually price, price, price, but who knows what might have happened.
In the end Amstrad was sold to Sky and perhaps some of the ethos of Amstrad is still in Sky hardware.
There is now far more competition and money for developing new technologies into consumer products in a market that is (was?) dominated by Silicon Valley where the vast wealth has spawned many angels who are prepared to invest in ideas and people. Whether this is how things will happen in the future is being challenged by the move to cyber space where investors, capital and inventors can be anywhere with strong sectors in China and India. One can now have an idea, commission someone found on the internet to design what ever you want and then have some other outfit make the device from the PCB through to a commercial product. Even this is now challenged as more and more manufacturing kit drops in price so that high wage countries can now offer competitive prices. Adafruit based in New York being an example of how one person (Last Ada) has overcome the supposed cost advantage of places like China. Even the price advantage is falling and Sandy Munroe argues that there is no Chinese low cost advantage compared to the States and although Tesla are not selling as many Tesla in China as they were, the market for these sophisticated and relatively expensive machines is buoyant in China.
Some have called the 21st century the age of gearing, where there are a great supply of folk to produce what someone wants to sell creating a gearing of idea to production and then a gearing of capital from small to large via a percentage sales going back into making more widgets. These abilities have driven down the cost of everything as manufacturing is now much cheaper and there is soon lots of competition so the idea is to flog as much as possible at a low price and low margins to make it hard for competitors to move in.
Regards,