Amstrad

Amstrad . It is an electronics manufacturer based in Brentwood, Essex, England, founded in 1968 by Sir 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 capture 25% of the computer market in Europe. In 2006 Amstrad’s main business area is the manufacture of interactive Sky TV receivers.

Summary

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• 1 Brief historical review
  • 1 Years 60 and 70
  • 2 80s
  • 3 90s – 2007
  • 4 2007 – Present: BSkyB controls Amstrad
• 2 Product line
• 3 Source

Brief historical review

60s and 70s

Amstrad was founded in 1968 by who would be its president for forty years, Alan Sugar, entering the consumer electronics market. During the 1970s, they led the low-cost Hi-Fi, TV and radio cassettes segment. Low prices were achieved by manufacturing the plate housings using injected plastic, reducing costs compared to the competition, which used processes by means of vacuum formation. Amstrad expanded into the production of audio amplifiers and tuners.

80s

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-bit, 8-bit Zilog Z80 with 64 Kbytes of RAM, also included the tape drive and a monitor (green or color phosphor) with the integrated power supply. The CPC range was launched in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Germany and Spain, where it was a best seller. It does not succeed in unseating the competitors, but from now on, all home computer video games that have sales success aspirations will be versioned for those three systems.

This was followed by the CPC 664 models, with a 3 “disk drive, and the CPC 6128 with 128 Kbytes of RAM and a more discreet and supposedly professional keyboard, but identical in manufacturing to the other models. Later CPC« Plus »variants ( 1990) tried to extend the life of the product by significantly increasing its functionality and maintaining compatibility with the GX4000, Amstrad’s brief foray into the field of game consoles. Unfortunately, the CPC Plus could not compete with the emerging 16-bit computers and passed on tiptoe through the market, finally going extinct very soon after its release.

In 1985 he introduced the Amstrad PCWs, which are marketed as a word processor at a price of £ 399 (their competitors were around £ 10,000), which literally takes the target market by storm, even overflowing it, after all in a complete computer Compatible with the CP / M operating system and which includes the LocoScript word processor as standard.

Amsoft, the Amstrad software division created to wrap up the launch of the 464, is so effective in converting the huge CP / M soft library to the bizarre 3-inch floppy compact format , which is easier to locate on Europe a dBase II in that format than in the native 5.25.

Amstrad briefly entered the video game console market with the CPC Plus-based GX4000, which never achieved much popularity. Actually, the game console was a CPC Plus without a keyboard and provided only with the cartridge unit that equipped both the CPC 464 Plus and the CPC 6128 Plus. They were sold along with the two pads that were also officially distributed with the computers. Despite its very discreet presence in the market and low sales index, it had some notable games such as Mystical or Switchblade.

On April 7, 1986, Amstrad announced the purchase of Sinclair Research «… the worldwide sales and manufacturing rights to all Sinclair computers to date, along with the Sinclair trademark and intellectual property rights relating to computers and accessories »that included the ZX Spectrum, for 5 million pounds. Amstrad released three new variants of the Spectrum, the ZX Spectrum 128 +2, based on the ZX Spectrum + 128K, with an integrated tape drive (such as the CPC 464); the ZX Spectrum +3, with an integrated disk drive (similar to CPC 664 and 6128), using the same 3 “disks as 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 affordable personal computers based on MS-DOS and later on Microsoft Windows , the first of which was the PC1512 for £ 399 in 1986. It was a success, capturing more than 25% of the European market. A year later, in 1987, he 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 8MHz running MS-DOS and GEM with a variant of the CGA video card that allowed GEM to display graphics in 16 colors .

90s – 2007

In the early 1990s Amstrad began to focus on notebook computers rather than desktop computers. As previously stated, in 1990 Amstrad attempted to enter the video game 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 employed 8-bit technology versus the 16-bit of the Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo . 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, suffering from various technical and usability problems and lacking most of the features included in the Apple Newton, although it was priced lower (around $ 450).

During these years he also launched several models of musical chains, with a disc plate and double deck in a pack integrated with the cabinet. Its low price stood out and it was one of the first to introduce the double deck to the market. Another innovative product was the launch of a 14 “TV screen that included VHS video, and a VHS player that incorporated two units (in the style of double-deck radio cassettes).

As Amstrad began to focus more on communications and less on computers, he bought several telecommunications companies including Betacom, Dancall Telecom, Viglen Computers and Dataflex Design Communications. Amstrad has been a leading provider of television receivers for the British satellite television operator Sky since its launch in 1989. Amstrad was key to Sky’s implementation as it was the only manufacturer capable of producing satellite dishes and antennas at the time of the system launch, and has continued to manufacture Sky receivers, from analog to digital, and now includes the Sky + digital video recorder.

In 1997 Amstrad supplied receivers for the Australian operator Foxtel, and in 2004 for the Italian Sky Italia. In 2000 Amstrad launched the first of its devices that combine telephony and email, called em @ iler. It was followed by em @ ilerplus in 2002, and E3 Videophone in 2004. Amstrad 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 Apprentice series, Amstrad has also started producing audio-animatronics.

2007 – Present: BSkyB controls Amstrad

In July 2007, BSkyB announced 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 provider of BSkyB since 1988. On July 2, 2008 Alan Sugar leaves the presidency of the company.

Product line

1. Amstrad CPC

• Amstrad CPC 464
• Amstrad CPC 472
• Amstrad CPC 664
• Amstrad CPC 6128

1. Amstrad CPC +

• Amstrad CPC 464+
• Amstrad CPC 6128+
• Amstrad GX4000

1. Amstrad PCW

• Amstrad PCW 8256
• Amstrad PCW 8512
• Amstrad PCW 9512 (1987)
• Amstrad PcW9256 (1991)
• Amstrad PcW9512 + (1991)
• Amstrad PcW10 (1993)
• Amstrad PcW16

1. Amstrad NC

• Amstrad NC 100
• Amstrad NC 150
• Amstrad NC 200

1. Amstrad Penpad
2. The Sinclair Spectrum range
3. Sinclair Spectrum +2
4. Sinclair Spectrum + 2a / b
5. Sinclair Spectrum +3
6. Amstrad PC1512 (Intel 8086 CPU manufactured by AMD, 8MHz, 512Kb RAM, CGA / Plantronics Graphics)
7. Amstrad PC1640 (Intel 8086 CPU manufactured by AMD, 8MHz, 640Kb RAM, EGA Color Graphics)
8. Amstrad PC2086 (Intel 8086 CPU manufactured by AMD, 8MHz, 640Kb RAM, VGA Graphics) released in 1989
9. Amstrad PC2286 (Intel 80286 CPU, 12.5MHz, 1Mb RAM, VGA Graphics) released in 1989
10. Amstrad PC2386 (Intel 80386DX CPU, 20MHz, 4Mb RAM, VGA Graphics) released 1989
11. Amstrad PPC 512 and 640