| sinclairvoyance |
IF ANYONE questioned the size of the possible market for home computers, they should take note of the experience of W H Smith. The company sells more magazines on computers than it does women's magazines. There are three computer publications which sell more copies than the most popular women's magazine.
This explains why Smiths is expanding that side of its retailing steadily. As the company puts it, most of its sales are in "maturing markets", so the need to find new and dynamic lines is essential for its future.
The growth potential is phenomenal. It is estimated that, despite sales of almost 500,000 ZX-81s, Sinclair Research has tapped only about two percent of the estimated home computer market. Despite allowing for the fact that it is difficult to assess a market which did not exist two years ago, there is still an enormous hole in the market.
Smith's reaction in the medium term is to try to cover the whole market for both hardware and software. In the long term, it is thinking of specialising on one sector, probably software. That ensures that the route future development will follow is much the same as that for the music market - few people these days expect to be able to buy records in the same place as they buy their music systems.
Follow the route a little further and you begin talking about computer systems designed for home use. One vision of the future, suggested by W H Smith, is that people start by buying some kind of simple keyboard which, in basic form, could be used as a typewriter or calculator. To this could be added various types of processor, memory and printer, to build a personal system to suit a variety of requirements.
Such thinking is perfectly logical and likely to happen, since it sounds very like the way in which Sony developed the music market. Before Sony split music centres into various parts, most people listened to their music on record players built as one unit. Such a thought prompts the question as to what the Japanese are doing about the home computer market.
It would be comforting to think that the lead which Sinclair Research and other British companies have in the field would be an advantage but such leads have been no insurance in the past and are unlikely to be in the future. That is especially true of the home computer market, where changes can happen so quickly.
The British companies involved are also small. One big push by a large Japanese conglomerate could be sufficient to push them on to the sidelines. If the market is as big as estimated, it would not even be necessary to launch a particularly innovative product model.
It would be pleasant to think it would be a British company which takes the plunge.
THERE IS possibly something to be said for the ponderous decision structures of many of Britain's major companies. With the limitation of personal initiative and the promotion of company spirit, the wish to leave and start a new business is severely curtailed.
Compare that to Clive Sinclair's companies, past and present, where initiative and freedom of thought have been encouraged. It is one of the benefits of being a small company that it is possible and it has been used, by Sinclair Research especially, to put new ideas into practice quickly.
The freedom, however, is not total. In the end it is Clive Sinclair who takes the important decisions. Having tasted some easing of constraints, it can be very frustrating when there is still some limitation to action.
It was that frustration which led to the departure of Richard Altwasser to join a growing band of former Sinclair colleagues from whom he now faces some form of competition.
The people behind Acorn Computers and the Grundy Newbrain, which finally was launched last month, all worked with Sinclair at some stage. Altwasser and his partner, Steven Vickers, are keeping quiet about their plans but it is unlikely they will be straying far from the microcomputer field they know so well.
Whether their new company will be big enough to consider launching a new computer is open to conjecture. Leaving that aside for the moment, there is still a large market in software and hardware peripherals where they could compete with their former employer.