Commodore, the commonly used
name for Commodore International, was a US
electronics company based in West Chester,
Pennsylvania
which played a vital role in the development of the
home–personal computer industry in the
1980s. The company is also known under the name of its
R&D operation,
Commodore
Business Machines (
CBM). Commodore
developed and marketed the world's best-selling desktop computer,
the
Commodore 64 (1982). The company
declared
bankruptcy in 1994, but since
then, there have been several attempts to revive its
Amiga systems. The company revived in 2005 after a few
mergers with Yeahronimo Media Ventures Inc., SATXS Communications
BV, and Tulip Computers.
History
Founding and early years
Original Commodore logo: all-lowercase company name
(1962–1984).
Commodore PR-100 programmable
calculator
The
company that would become Commodore International was started in
1954 in Toronto as the Commodore Portable Typewriter
Company by Polish immigrant and Auschwitz
survivor Jack
Tramiel. He was already running a small business
repairing typewriters for a few years while living in New York and
driving a taxicab, but managed to sign a deal with a
Czechoslovakian company to manufacture their designs in Canada, and
moved to Toronto to start production. By the late 1950s a wave of
Japanese machines forced most North American typewriter companies
out of business, but Tramiel instead turned to
adding machines.
In 1955 the company was formally incorporated as
Commodore
Business Machines in Canada (
CBM). In
1962 Commodore went public at New York stock exchange under the
name of
Commodore International Limited. In the
late 1960s history repeated itself when Japanese firms started
producing and exporting adding machines. The company's main
investor and chairman,
Irving Gould,
suggested that Tramiel travel to Japan to understand how to
compete. Instead, he returned with the new idea to produce
electronic
calculators, which were just
coming on the market.
Commodore soon had a profitable calculator line and was one of the
more popular brands in the early 1970s, producing both consumer as
well as scientific/programmable calculators.
However, in 1975,
Texas
Instruments
, the main
supplier of calculator parts, entered the market directly and put
out a line of machines priced at less than Commodore's cost of the
parts. Commodore had to be rescued once again by an infusion
of cash from Gould, which Tramiel used beginning in 1976 to
purchase several second-source chip suppliers, including
MOS Technology, Inc., in order to assure his
supply. He agreed to buy MOS, which was having troubles of its own,
only on the condition that its chip designer
Chuck Peddle join Commodore directly as head of
engineering.
In
December 2007 when Tramiel was visiting the Computer History
Museum
in Mountain View, California
, for the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64, he
was asked why he called his company Commodore, he had this to say:
"I wanted to call my company General, but there's so many Generals
in the U.S.: General Electric,
General Motors. Then I went to
Admiral, but that was taken. So I wind up in Berlin, Germany, with
my wife, and we were in a cab, and the cab made a short stop, and
in front of us was an
Opel
Commodore." Tramiel said that in many interviews, but Opel's
Commodore didn't debut until 1968, years after the company had been
named.
"Computers for the masses, not the classes"
Commodore PET 2001 (1977)
Once Chuck Peddle had taken over engineering at Commodore, he
convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were already a dead end and
that they should turn their attention to
home computers. Peddle packaged his existing
KIM-1 single-board computer design in a
metal case, along with a full-travel
QWERTY
keyboard,
monochrome monitor, and
tape
recorder for program and data storage, to produce the
Commodore PET (Personal Electronic
Transactor). From PET's 1977 debut, Commodore would be a computer
company.
Commodore
had been reorganized the year before into Commodore
International, Ltd., moving its financial headquarters to
the Bahamas
and its
operational headquarters to West Chester, Pennsylvania, near to the MOS Technology site. The
operational headquarters, where research and development of new
products occurred, retained the name Commodore Business Machines,
Inc.
The PET computer line was used primarily in schools, due to its
tough all-metal construction (some models were labeled "Teacher's
PET"), but did not compete well in the home setting where graphics
and sound were important. This was addressed with the introduction
of the
VIC-20 in 1981, which was
introduced at a cost of US$299 and sold in retail stores. Commodore
took out aggressive ads featuring
William Shatner asking consumers "Why buy
just a video game?" The strategy worked and the VIC-20 became the
first computer to ship more than one million units. A total of 2.5
million units were sold over the machine's lifetime.
Commodore 64 (1982)
In 1982, Commodore introduced the
Commodore
64 as the successor to the VIC-20. Thanks to a well-designed
set of
chips designed by MOS
Technology, the C64 possessed remarkably capable sound and graphics
for its time and is often credited with starting the computer
demo scene. Its US$595 price was high
compared with that of the VIC-20, but it was still much less
expensive than any other 64K computer on the market. Early C64 ads
boasted, "You can't buy a better computer at twice the
price."
Australian ads used a tune speaking the words "# Are you keeping up
with the commodore? Because the commodore is keeping up with you.
#"
In 1983 Tramiel decided to focus on market share and cut the price
of the VIC-20 and C64 dramatically, starting what would be called
the "home computer war." TI responded by cutting prices on its
TI-99/4A, which had been
introduced in 1981.
Soon there was an all-out price war involving
Commodore, TI, Atari and practically every
vendor other than Apple
Computer
. This
price war likely contributed to the
video game crash of 1983. By the
end of this conflict, Commodore had shipped somewhere around 22
million C64s—making the C64 the best selling computer of all
time—and in the process, drove TI out of the home-computer market,
almost destroyed Atari, bankrupted most smaller companies, and
wiped out its own savings. Tramiel's motto, "Business is war," had
taken its toll.
Tramiel quits; The Amiga vs. ST battle
Second Commodore logo, with mixed-case company name
(1985–1994).
Commodore's board of directors were as impacted as anyone else by
the price spiral and decided they wanted out. An internal power
struggle resulted; in January 1984, Tramiel resigned. He founded a
new company, Tramel Technology (spelled differently so people would
pronounce it correctly), and hired away a number of Commodore
engineers to begin work on a next-generation computer design.
Now it was left to the remaining Commodore management to salvage
the company's fortunes and plan for the future. It did so by buying
a small startup company called
Amiga
Corporation in August 1984, which became a subsidiary of
Commodore, called Commodore-Amiga, Inc. Commodore brought this new
16-bit computer design (initially codenamed
"Lorraine", later dubbed the
Amiga 1000)
to market in the fall of 1985 for US $1295.
But Tramiel had beaten Commodore to the punch. His design was 95%
completed by June (which only fueled speculation that his engineers
had taken technology with them from Commodore). In July 1984 he
bought the consumer side of Atari Inc. from
Warner Communications which allowed him to
strike back and release the
Atari ST
earlier in 1985 for about $800.
During development in 1983, Amiga had exhausted venture capital and
was desperate for more financing.
Jay
Miner and company had approached former employer
Atari, and the "Warner owned" Atari had paid Amiga to
continue development work. In return Atari was to get one-year
exclusive use of the design as a video game console. After one year
Atari would have the right to add a keyboard and market the
complete Amiga computer. The Atari Museum has acquired the
Atari-Amiga contract and Atari engineering logs revealing that the
Atari Amiga was originally designated as the 1850XLD. As Atari was
heavily involved with Disney at the time, it was later code-named
"Mickey", and the 256K memory expansion board was codenamed
"Minnie".
The following year, Tramiel discovered that
Warner Communications wanted to sell
Atari, which was rumored to be losing about $10,000 a day.
Interested in Atari's overseas manufacturing and worldwide
distribution network for his new computer, he approached Atari and
entered negotiations. After several on-again/off-again talks with
Atari in May and June 1984, Tramiel had secured his funding and
bought Atari's Consumer Division (which included the console and
home computer departments) in July.
As more execs and researchers left Commodore to join up with
Tramiel's new company
Atari Corp. after
the announcement, Commodore followed by filing lawsuits against
four former engineers for theft of trade secrets in late July. This
was intended, in effect, to bar Tramiel from releasing his new
computer.
One of Tramiel's first acts after forming Atari Corp. was to fire
most of Atari's remaining staff, and to cancel almost all ongoing
projects, in order to review their continued viability. In late
July/early August, Tramiel representatives discovered the original
Amiga contract from the previous fall. Seeing a chance to gain some
leverage, Tramiel immediately used the contract to counter-sue
Commodore through its new subsidiary, Amiga, on August 13.
The Amiga crew, still suffering serious financial problems, had
sought more monetary support from investors that entire spring. At
around the same time that Tramiel was in negotiations with Atari,
Amiga entered into discussions with Commodore. The discussions
ultimately led to Commodore's intentions to purchase Amiga
outright, which would (from Commodore's viewpoint) cancel any
outstanding contracts - including Atari Inc.'s. This
"interpretation" is what Tramiel used to counter-sue, and sought
damages and an injunction to bar Amiga (and effectively Commodore)
from producing any resembling technology. This was an attempt to
render Commodore's new acquisition (and the source for its next
generation of computers) useless. The resulting court case lasted
for several years, with both companies releasing their respective
products. By March 1987 they had settled out of court, with all
suits against Tramiel's engineers dropped. His "Business is War"
tactics had succeeded again.
Amiga 500 (1987)
Throughout the life of the ST and Amiga platforms, a ferocious
Atari-Commodore rivalry raged. While this rivalry was in many ways
a holdover from the days when the Commodore 64 had first challenged
the Atari 800 (among others) in a series of scathing television
commercials, the events leading to the launch of the ST and Amiga
only served to further alienate fans of each computer, who fought
vitriolic
holy wars on the
question of which platform was superior. This was reflected in
sales numbers for the two platforms until the release of the
Amiga 500 in 1987 which led the Amiga
sales to exceed the ST by about 1.5 to 1, despite reaching the
market later. However, the battle was vain as neither platform
captured a significant share of the world computer market and only
the Apple Macintosh would survive the industry-wide shift to
Microsoft Windows running on PC clones.
Demise and bankruptcy
In the 1970s and early 80s, the computer press had often sought
Commodore (one of the industry's leading players), and its colorful
management for information. The VIC-20 and C64, although
aggressively marketed, were arguably more successful because of
their price than their marketing. After Tramiel's departure,
Commodore executives shied away from mass advertising and other
marketing ploys, fearful of repeating past mistakes. Commodore also
retreated from its earlier strategy of selling its computers to
discount outlets and toy stores, and now favored authorized
dealers.
By the late 1980s, the personal computer market had become
dominated by the
IBM PC compatible
and
Apple Macintosh platforms.
Commodore's marketing efforts for the Amiga were less competitive
and seemed half-hearted and unfocused. The company also
concentrated on consumer products that would not see a demand for
another few years—including a digital TV system called
CDTV.
In the early 1990s, CBM continued selling Amigas with 7–14 MHz
68000-family CPUs (even though
Amiga 3000 with 25 MHz
68030 was in the market by that time), when PCs with
33 MHz
486, high-color
graphics cards and
SoundBlaster (or compatible)
sound cards offered comparable, and eventually
higher, performance, albeit at higher prices. By way of contrast,
when introduced in 1985, the Amiga had competed favorably against
286-based systems with
EGA graphics and rudimentary sound
capabilities that frequently cost 2–3 times as much.
In 1992, the production of the
A600 seemed
like a backward move; it replaced the
A500, yet it removed the numeric keypad, Zorro
expansion slot, SCSI capability, and other functionality in favor
of PCMCIA and a theoretically cost-reduced design. It was basically
unexpandable and lasted less than a year. Productivity developers
moved to PC and Macintosh, while the console wars took over the
gaming market. David Pleasance, managing director of Commodore UK,
described the A600 as a 'complete and utter screw-up'. (Smith,
1994)
In late 1992, Amiga hardware began to reach parity with PCs with
the release of the
A4000 and
A1200 computers, which featured an improved
graphics chipset, the
AGA. By this point, both the
IBM PC and Apple Macintosh had a much larger market share than the
Amiga platform. As software developers shifted to these platforms,
the Amiga lost value for mainstream consumers. The custom-designed
and custom-built AGA chipset also cost Commodore considerably more
than the commodity chips used in IBM PCs, further reducing
Commodore's profit margins. Common wisdom was that even though the
AGA clearly improved upon the original chipset (OCS), it never
returned to Amiga the clear dominance of multimedia computing that
it once promised.
Software piracy
has often been given by trade publications and user groups as the
reason for the Amiga's demise, but this view is controversial . For
information on the specific challenges in the Amiga market of the
time, see the
Amiga Software
article.
In 1994, the 'make or break' system, according to Pleasance, was
the 32-bit
CD-ROM-based
game console: the
CD32, but it was not sufficiently profitable to
put Commodore back in the black.
In the early 90's, all servicing and warranty repairs were
outsourced to
Wang Laboratories.
By 1994,
only its operations in Germany
and the
United
Kingdom
were still profitable. Commodore declared
bankruptcy on April 29, 1994, and its assets were liquidated.
The former
site of Commodore's operational headquarters in West Chester,
Pennsylvania, now houses the headquarters and broadcast studios
of leading cable retailer QVC, Inc. (On
November 26, 2004, QVC became the first retailer to sell the
DTV, a "C64 in a joystick" designed
by
Jeri Ellsworth.)
The company's computer systems, especially the C64 and Amiga
series, retain a cult-following among their users years after its
demise.
Post-Commodore International, Ltd.
Following its liquidation, Commodore's former assets went their
separate ways, with none of Commodore's successors repeating
Commodore's early success.
Commodore UK was the only subsidiary to survive the bankruptcy and
even placed a bid to buy out the rest of the operation, or at least
the former parent company. For a time it was considered the front
runner in the bid, and numerous reports (all false), surfaced
during the 1994–1995 time frame that Commodore UK had made the
purchase. Commodore UK stayed in business by selling old inventory
and making computer speakers and some other types of computer
peripherals. However, Commodore UK lost its financial backing after
several larger companies, including
Gateway Computers and
Dell Inc., became interested, primarily for
Commodore's 47 patents relating to the Amiga.
Ultimately, the
successful bidder was German PC
conglomerate Escom, and Commodore UK was
absorbed into Escom in mid-1995.
Escom paid US$14 million for Commodore International, primarily for
the Commodore brand name. It separated the Commodore and Amiga
operations into separate divisions and quickly started using the
brand name on a line of PCs sold in
Europe.
However, it quickly started losing money due to over-expansion,
went bankrupt on July 15, 1996, and was liquidated.
In September 1997, the Commodore brand name was acquired by Dutch
computer maker
Tulip Computers
NV. Tulip's ownership was largely academic until July 11, 2003,
when Tulip announced it would re-launch the Commodore name,
including new Commodore 64-related products, and threatened legal
action against commercial Web sites that used the computer's name
without a license. On 18 June 2004, Tulip introduced the website
CommodoreWorld.com (see external
links, below), run by its new daughter company
Commodore International
BV.
The
Commodore brand name also resurfaced in late 2003 on an inexpensive
portable MP3 player made in the People's
Republic of China
by Tai Guen
Enterprise, sold mostly in Europe.
However, the device's connection to Tulip, the legal owners of the
name, is unclear.
In July 2004, Tulip announced a new series of products using the
Commodore name: fPET, a flash memory-based USB Key drive; mPET, a
flash-based MP3 Player and digital recorder; eVIC, a 20 GB music
player; and the
C64 DTV.
In late 2004 Tulip sold the Commodore name to
Yeahronimo Media Ventures for €22 million. The
sale was completed in March 2005 after months of
negotiations.
The
Commodore Semiconductor Group (formerly MOS Technology, Inc.) was
bought by its former management and in 1995, resumed operations
under the name GMT Microelectronics, utilizing a
troubled facility in Norristown, Pennsylvania
that Commodore had closed in 1992. By 1999
it had $21 million in revenues and 183 employees. However, in 2001
the
United
States Environmental Protection Agency shut the plant down. GMT
ceased operations and was liquidated.
Ownership of the Amiga line passed through a few companies, from
Escom of Germany in 1995, and then to U.S. PC clone maker
Gateway in 1997, before an exclusive
lifetime license to was made to
Amiga, Inc., a
Washington company founded by former Gateway employees Bill McEwen
and Fleecy Moss in 2000. On March 15, 2004, Amiga, Inc. announced
that on April 23, 2003 it had transferred its rights over past and
future versions of the Amiga OS (but not over other intellectual
property) to Itec, LLC, later acquired by KMOS, Inc., a Delaware
company. On March 16, 2005, KMOS, Inc. announced that it had
completed all registrations with the State of Delaware to change
its corporate name to Amiga, Inc.
Commodore Gaming was formed to
reintroduce the brand to the booming gaming PC market, after
jointly acquiring the Commodore name with Commodore International
Corporation in 2005. At the CeBIT 2007 show in Germany, four new
gaming geared PCs were introduced; named Cg, Cgs, Cgx and Cxx.
These are described as ranging from an entry level gaming PC to an
“extreme specification model”. Each machine running Windows Vista
with customization from a range of high end components and
peripherals.
Product line
Calculators
774D, 9R23, C110, F4146R, MM3, M55, P50, PR100, SR1800, SR4120D,
SR4120R, SR4148D, SR4148R, SR4190R, SR4212, SR4912, SR4921RPN,
SR5120D, SR5120R, SR5148D, SR5148R, SR5190R, SR59, SR7919, SR7949,
SR9150R, SR9190R, US*3
Computers
(listed chronologically)
Games Consoles
Software
Notes
- Tim Smith and Chris Lloyd (1994), "Chewing the Facts", 'Amiga
Format' Annual 1994, 106-111, 107.
- Boris Kretzinger: Commodore - Aufstieg und Fall eines
Computerriesen, Skriptorium-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-938199-04-0.
References
- Software Development Times (January 1, 2008), Page 10.
- Kretzinger, Boris: Commodore - Aufstieg und Fall eines
Computerriesen, Morschen 2005, p. 14, Fn 18.
- Bagnall, Brian. On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall
of Commodore, Variant Press. Page 221. ISBN 0-9738649-0-7
-
http://www.theregister.com/2004/12/29/tulip_sells_commodore/
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