11 Apr
2012
11 Apr
'12
9:53 p.m.
Brent Hilpert wrote:
I never followed the details of the intertwined
Commodore/Atari
business history, but the part I've never really heard discussed much
is how Commodore successfully transitioned from calculators to
personal computers. Calculator manufactures were dropping like flies
in the mid-70's as calculators became a low-cost commodity business,
Commodore was one of the few that managed to migrate to and thrive in
a new business and market. Strikes me it took some astuteness to
accomplish that.
Commodore, Sinclair and MITS are three companies I think of when talking
about success in moving from calculators to personal computers. There
were probably others and I don't count HP nor Texas Instruments since
they just did well with both and so didn't "transition".
In the case of Commodore, a bit of luck was an important factor. Jack
Tramiel saw that it was impossible to continue to compete in the
calculator business without becoming vertically integrated like TI (his
current supplier). So he bought a chip company: MOS Technology. This
would allow him to make the chips in his calculators himself and beat TI
and the Japanese in price.
But MOS Technology had just entered the personal computer business by
accident - their development board proved to be very popular with end
users.
http://oldcomputers.net/kim1.html
So now Commodore was in the personal computing business (see the bottom
picture on that page) and had Chuck Peddle working for them who was
anxious to do it right.
-- Jecel