From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amstrad was founded in 1968 by its current Chairman and CEO, Alan Sugar. Amstrad entered the market in the field of consumer electronics. During the 1970s they were at the forefront of low-priced hi-fi, TV and car stereo cassette technologies. Lower prices were achieved by injection moulding plastic hi-fi turntable covers, undercutting competitors who used the vacuum forming process. Amstrad expanded to the production of audio amplifiers and tuners.

In 1980, Amstrad went public trading on the London Stock Exchange, and doubled in size each year during the early '80s. Amstrad began marketing their own home computers in an attempt to capture the market from Commodore and Sinclair, with the Amstrad CPC range in 1984. The CPC 464 was launched in the UK, France, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain and Italy. It was followed by the CPC 664 and CPC 6128 models. "Plus" variants later in the products lives increased their functionality slightly, while building in compatibility with the GX4000, Amstrad's short-lived foray into the video gaming world.
In 1985, the business-oriented Amstrad PCW range was introduced, which were principally word processors running the CP/M operating system and the LocoScript word processing program. The "Amsoft" division of Amstrad was set up to provide in-house software and consumables. Amstrad briefly entered the video game console business with the GX4000 based on the CPC Plus hardware which failed to catch on.

On 7 April 1986 Amstrad announced it had bought from Sinclair Research "...the worldwide rights to sell and manufacture all existing and future Sinclair computers and computer products, together with the Sinclair brand name and those intellectual property rights where they relate to computers and computer related products." which included the ZX Spectrum, for £5 million. This included Sinclair's unsold stock of Sinclair QLs and Spectrums. Amstrad made more than £5 million on selling these surplus machines alone. Amstrad launched two new variants of the Spectrum: the ZX Spectrum +2, based on the ZX Spectrum 128, with a built-in tape drive (like the CPC 464) and, the following year, the ZX Spectrum +3, with a built-in floppy disk drive (similar to the CPC 664 and 6128), taking the 3" disks that many Amstrad machines used.

The company produced a range of affordable MS-DOS-based, and later Windows-based personal computers, the first of which was the PC1512 at £399 in 1986. It was a success, capturing more than 25% of the European computer market. A year later, in 1987, the Amstrad PCW 8512 was released as a computer dedicated to word processing, it was priced at £499. In 1988 Amstrad attempted to make the first affordable portable personal computer with the PPC 512 / 640, introduced a year before the Macintosh Portable. It ran MS-DOS at 8MHz and its built-in screen could emulate the Monochrome Display Adapter or Color Graphics Adapter. Amstrad's final (and ill-fated) attempts to exploit the Sinclair brand were based on the company's own PCs; a compact desktop PC derived from the PPC 512, branded as the Sinclair PC200, and the PC1512 rebadged as the Sinclair PC500.

1990s

In the early 1990s, Amstrad began to focus on portable computers rather than desktop computers. In 1990, Amstrad tried to enter the gaming market with the Amstrad GX4000, similar to what Commodore did at the same time with the C64C and the C64 GS. The console was a commercial failure, becoming less popular because it used 8-bit technology unlike the 16-bit Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. In 1993, Amstrad was licenced by Sega to produce a system which was similar to the Sega TeraDrive, going by the name of the Amstrad Mega PC, to try and regain their image in the gaming market. The system didn't succeed as well as expected, mostly due to its high initial retail price of £599. In that same year, Amstrad released the PenPad, a PDA similar to the Apple Newton, and released only weeks before it. It was a commercial failure, and had several technical and usability problems. It lacked most features that the Apple Newton included, but had a lower price at $450.

Amstrad Software

Amstrad Hardware

Amstrad Books