Introduction - Computer Busses - page 44

nies have given away such an advantage with a single product. Where are Zilog now?
Head buried in the sand, probably.
5. DEC , who was one of the most innovative companies in the computer industry. They
developed a completely new market niche with their minicomputers, but they refused to
see, until it was too late, that the microcomputer would have an impact on the computer
market. DEC went from a company that made a profit of $1.31 billion in 1988, to a
company which, in one quarter of 1992, lost $2 billion. Their founder, Ken Olsen, even-
tually left the company in 1992, and his successor brought sweeping changes. Eventu-
ally, though, in 1998 it was one of the new PC companies, Compaq, who would buy
DEC. For Compaq, DEC seemed a good match, as DEC had never really created much
of a market for PCs, and had concentrated on high-end products, such as Alpha-based
workstations and network servers.
6. Fairchild Semiconductor . Few companies have ever generated so many ideas and incu-
bated so many innovative companies, and got so little in return.
7. Xerox . Many of the ideas in modern computing, such as GUIs and networking, were
initiated at Xerox's research facility. Unfortunately, Xerox lacked force to develop them
into products, maybe because they reduced Xerox's main market, which was, and still is,
very much based on paper.
8. PCjr , which was another case of incompatibility. IBM lost a whole year in releasing the
PCjr, and lost a lot of credibility with their suppliers (many of whom were left with un-
sold systems) and their competitors (who were given a whole year to catch up with
IBM).
9. OS/2 , IBM's attempt to regain the operating system market from Microsoft. It was a
compromised operating system, and their development team lacked the freedom of the
original IBM PC development. Too many people and too many committees were in-
volved in its development. It thus lacked the freedom, and independence that the Boca
Raton development team had. IBM's mainframe divisions were, at the time, a powerful
force in IBM, and could easily stall, or veto a product if it had an effect on their profit-
able market.
10. CP/M , which many believed would become the standard operating system for micro-
computers. Digital Research had an excellent opportunity to make it the standard oper-
ating system for the PC, but Microsoft overcame them by making their DOS system
much cheaper.
11. MCA , which was the architecture that IBM tried to move the market with. It failed be-
cause Compaq, and several others, went against it, and kept developing the existing ar-
chitecture.
12. RISC processors , which were seen as the answer to increased computing power. As
Intel has shown, one of the best ways to increase computing speed is to simply ramp up
the clock speed, and make the busses faster.
13. Sinclair Research , who after the success of the ZX81 and the Spectrum, threw it all
away by releasing a whole range of under-achievers, such as the QL, and the C5.
14. MSX , which was meant to be the technology that would standardize computer software
on PCs. Unfortunately, it hadn't heard of the new 16-bit processors, and most of all, the
IBM PC.
15. Lotus Development , who totally misjudged the market, by not initially developing their
Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet for Microsoft Windows. They instead developed it for OS/2, and
eventually lost the market leadership to Microsoft Excel. Lotus also missed an excellent
opportunity to purchase a large part of Microsoft when they were still a small company.
The profits on that purchase would have been gigantic.