Amstrad
Amstrad was an electronics manufacturer based in Brentwood, Essex, England, founded in 1968 by Lord Alan Michael Sugar in the United Kingdom. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading. It entered the London Stock Exchange in 1980. In the late 1980s Amstrad managed to gain 25% of the computer market in Europe. Currently Amstrad is not active, although it has not been formally dissolved.
History
1960s and 1970s
Amstrad was founded in 1968 by its forty-year president, Alan Sugar, entering the consumer electronics market. During the 1970s they led the low-cost Hi-Fi, TV and boombox segment. Low prices were achieved by manufacturing the sinker housings using injected plastic, reducing costs compared to the competition, which used processes through vacuum formation. Amstrad expanded into the production of audio amplifiers and tuners.
1980s
In 1980, Amstrad issued shares on the London Stock Exchange, doubling in size annually for the first few years. Amstrad began marketing its own personal computers in an attempt to capture the Commodore and Sinclair market with the CPC 464 in 1984. The computer, based on a 3.7 MHz 8-bit Zilog Z80 with 64 KiB of RAM included plus the tape drive and a monitor (green or color phosphor) with integrated power supply. The CPC range was launched in the UK, France, Australia, Germany and Spain, where it was a bestseller. It fails to unseat its competitors, but henceforth every video game for the home computer that had aspirations of sales success would be versioned for this system.
It was followed by the CPC 664 models, with a 3" disk drive, and the CPC 6128 with 128 KiB of RAM and a more discreet and supposedly professional keyboard, but made identically to the other models. Later variants CPC "Plus" (1990) tried to extend the life of the product by significantly increasing its functionality and including the Amstrad GX4000, Amstrad's first foray into the field of game consoles (a CPC Plus without a keyboard or storage unit). Unfortunately, CPC Plus could not compete with the emerging 16-bit computers and tiptoed across the market, eventually dying out shortly after its release.
In 1985 it introduced the Amstrad PCW, which is marketed as a word processor at a price of £399 (its competitors were around £10,000), which literally overwhelms the target market, even overwhelming it, because after all it is a complete computer compatible with the CP/M operating system and includes the LocoScript word processor as standard.
Amsoft, the software division of Amstrad created to support the launch of the 464, is so effective in its work of converting to the strange Compact Floppy format of a 3-inch floppy disk the vast library of software of the CP/M, that it is easier to locate a dBase II in Europe in that format than in the native 5.25.
Amstrad briefly entered the video game console market with the GX4000, based on the CPC Plus, which never caught on. Actually, the game console was a CPC Plus without a keyboard and provided only with the cartridge unit that both the CPC 464 Plus and the CPC 6128 Plus equipped. They were sold together with the two pads that were also officially distributed with the computers. Despite its very discreet presence in the market and low sales rate, it had some notable games like Mystical or Switchblade.
On April 7, 1986, Amstrad announced the purchase of Sinclair Research "...the worldwide rights to sell and manufacture all Sinclair computers to date, along with the Sinclair trademark and rights intellectual property rights relating to computers and accessories", which included the ZX Spectrum, for £5 million. Amstrad released three new variants of the Spectrum, the ZX Spectrum 128 +2, based on the ZX Spectrum + 128K, with an integrated tape drive (like the CPC 464); the ZX Spectrum 128 +3, with an integrated drive (similar to the CPC 664 and 6128), using the same 3" than other Amstrad machines, and a completely new motherboard; and the ZX Spectrum +2A/+2B, which used the +3 board in a +2 box with a tape drive.
The company produced a range of inexpensive personal computers based on MS-DOS and later Microsoft Windows, the first of which was the PC1512 for £399 in 1986. It was a success, capturing over 25% of the European market. A year later, in 1987, it released the PCW 8512 as a dedicated word processing computer at a price of £499. In 1988 he tried to make the first portable personal computer with the PPC 512 / 640, introduced a year before the Macintosh Portable, at 8 MHz it ran MS-DOS and GEM with a variant of the CGA video card that allowed GEM to display graphics at 16 colors.
1990s to 2007
In the early 1990s Amstrad began to focus on laptops rather than desktops. As previously mentioned, in 1990 Amstrad tried to enter the game console market with the Amstrad GX4000, similar to how Commodore had done with the C64 and C64 GS. The machine was a commercial failure, being unpopular because it used 8-bit technology as opposed to the 16-bit technology found on the Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo.
It releases an IBM PC/Sega Mega Drive compatible hybrid, the Amstrad Mega PC, an Amstrad PC7386 in which the AdLib sound card is replaced by an ISA board with the hardware of a Sega Mega Drive 1, with an input connector. PC joystick and headphone minijack on the back and cartridge slot and two Mega Drive gamepad connectors on the front. But the good idea is a failure when choosing an already obsolete CPU and the set is more expensive than buying the two devices separately.
In 1996 Amstrad released the PenPad, a PDA similar to the Apple Newton released just a few weeks earlier. It was also a commercial failure, suffered from various technical and usability problems, and lacked most of the features that the Apple Newton included, even though it came at a lower price (around $450).
During these years it also launched various models of music systems, with a turntable and double tape deck in a pack integrated with the furniture. Its low price stood out and it was one of the first to incorporate the double plate on the market. Another innovative product was the launch of a 14" which included VHS video, and a VHS player that incorporated two units (in the style of double-deck cassette players).
As Amstrad began to focus more on communications and less on computers, it bought several telecommunications companies including Betacom, Dancall Telecom, Viglen Computers, and Dataflex Design Communications. Amstrad has been one of the main suppliers of television receivers to the British satellite television operator Sky since its launch in 1989. Amstrad was instrumental in establishing Sky as it was the only manufacturer capable of producing receivers and satellite dishes. at the time of the system's launch, and has continued to make receivers for Sky, from analogue to digital, now including the digital video recorder for Sky+.
In 1997 Amstrad supplied receivers to the Australian operator Foxtel, and in 2004 to the Italian Sky Italia. In 2000 Amstrad launched the first of its combined telephony and email devices, called the e-m@iler. The e-m@ilerplus followed in 2002, and the E3 Videophone in 2004. Amstrad has also produced a variety of home entertainment products throughout its history, including audio devices, televisions, videos, and DVD players. Following the success of the British version of the series The Apprentice, Amstrad has also started to produce audio-animatronics.
2007 - Present: BSkyB controls Amstrad
In July 2007, BSkyB announces the purchase of Amstrad for £125m. BSkyB has been Amstrad's main client, representing 75% of sales in its Set-Top-Boxes sector. Amstrad has been a supplier of BSkyB since 1988. On July 2, 2008 Alan Sugar leaves the company's presidency.
Product Line
- Amstrad CPC
- Amstrad CPC 464
- Amstrad CPC 472
- Amstrad CPC 664
- Amstrad CPC 6128
- Amstrad CPC+
- Amstrad CPC 464+
- Amstrad CPC 6128+
- Amstrad GX4000 (videoconsole)
- Amstrad PCW
- Amstrad PCW 8256
- Amstrad PCW 8512
- Amstrad PCW 9512 (1987)
- Amstrad PcW9256 (1991)
- Amstrad PcW9512+ (1991)
- Amstrad PcW10 (1993)
- Amstrad PcW16
- Amstrad NC
- Amstrad NC 100
- Amstrad NC 150
- Amstrad NC 200
- Amstrad Penpad
- The Sinclair Spectrum range
- Sinclair Spectrum +2
- Sinclair Spectrum +2a/b
- Sinclair Spectrum +3
- Amstrad PC1512 (Intel 8086 CPU manufactured by AMD, 8MHz, 512Kb RAM, CGA/Plantronics Graphics)
- Amstrad PC1640 (Intel 8086 CPU manufactured by AMD, 8MHz, 640Kb RAM, EGA Color Graphics)
- Amstrad PC2086 (Intel 8086 CPU manufactured by AMD, 8MHz, 640Kb RAM, VGA Graphics) launched in 1989
- Amstrad PC2286 (Intel 80286 CPU, 12.5MHz, 1Mb RAM, VGA Graphics) released in 1989
- Amstrad PC2386 (Intel 80386DX CPU, 20MHz, 4Mb RAM, VGA Graphics) released 1989
- Amstrad PPC 512 and 640 (Portátiles)
- Amstrad Mega PC