if you've got a pre-built pc today it's probably sporting a brand name like acer
dell hp or lenovo but there used to be
plenty of other challengers that just kind of disappeared so we're back with the
second installment in our something part series where are they now
looking at the desktop computer companies of yesteryear starting with
one of the industry's oldest heavy hitters tandy originally a leather
company that got its start all the way back in 1919 tandy became successful
enough over the next few decades to eventually buy radio shack in 1963
paving the way for them to come out with the trs-80 model one in 1977. the model
one was one of the very first home computers that was widely available on
the market with tandy ultimately selling over 100 000 of them catapulting the
company to a whopping 60 share of the microcomputer market
the trs-80 wasn't ibm compatible though
after all the ibm pc hadn't been invented yet so the popularity of tandy
computers declined after the ibm pc hit the scene
but the company did find a niche for itself making pc compatibles which
proved quite popular for some time as the years went on though cost cutting
by its competitors forced tandy to sell its computer business to ast which
itself adopted a losing strategy of selling high cost pcs when other
companies were trying to do it as cheaply as possible
ast was eventually bought by samsung and then closed down relegating tandy to the
dustbin of history let's change gears then to one of the
cost-cutting competitors compac which focused on making ibm
compatibles from early on in its history their business model was to take ibm
systems and then make them better in some way like they did with the compact
portable in 1982 and the desk pro in
1984 which wasn't as visually striking as the
portable but was quite a bit faster than ibm's offerings at the time
this kind of innovation made compact a dominant force by the late 80s but it
was forced to change its strategy to focus more on cost as the pc industry
was rapidly becoming based around building commodity machines using
inexpensive components produced elsewhere this led to compact releasing the
presario line in 1993 which quickly
became a fixture at big box electronics stores
although this made compact quite successful again through the late 1990s
the company started to gain a reputation for unacceptably poor quality and they
were shipping way too many of these hyper-commoditized pcs combined with the
fact that compaq was now being undercut by companies like dell that sold
directly to customers instead of relying on retail middlemen that sold at their
own markup the company was suddenly in deep trouble and was eventually sold to
hp in 2002. the compact brand lived on for a while
though as one of hp's budget brands with the name getting sold again to an
argentinian company in 2015 and then
quietly disappearing altogether a few years later next up is gateway another
company that helped contribute to compact's demise through selling its pcs
directly to consumers online over the phone or even in its own retail stores
gateway's low cost and distinctive cow pattern boxes made their computers very
recognizable and they even came out with the first all-in-one pc from a major
brand name that cost less than a thousand dollars
by 2004 gateway had captured about one-fourth of the pc market in the us
but they missed a huge opportunity because they were very late getting into
the laptop market at a time when a major shift towards portable computing was
occurring instead gateway tried to get into the
business of consumer electronics like tvs but they didn't end up making much
money off that venture and combined with the fact that they weren't as aggressive
trying to sell their pcs to large businesses compared to dell they were
really struggling by the year 2007 when they were bought by acer
today gateway is still around as a low-cost acer brand that can be found in
some brick and mortar electronics stores a company that had a similar fate to
gateway was packard bell another mainstay on store shelves during the
1990s the company actually dates all the way back to 1933 and originally
manufactured radios getting into the computer business in 1957 when they
began manufacturing specialized computers for science and industry and
then into the home pc business in 1986
after a change in ownership packard bell quickly made deals with large department
and big box stores and thanks to a manufacturing process that emphasized
speed they quickly flooded the market with product by 1995 over half the pcs
on sale at sears yes sears sold pcs were packard
bells and their popularity was bolstered further by a shell program similar to
microsoft bob called packard bell navigator which
dumbed down the interface for novice pc users of which there were of course many
at the time remember pcs were pretty new however the company quickly gained a
reputation for poor quality and corner cutting and also turned off consumers
when they found out that they were using used parts in their machines without
properly disclosing the practice the company was in enough trouble that
it merged with nec the very next year but the brand never recovered from its
poor reputation in the us and packard bell disappeared from the u.s market in
2000. with that said they didn't have the same public image problems in europe
and other parts of the world where their pcs can still be found as an acer sub
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