Misplaced Pages

#697302

132-596: The consortium was announced on the 9th of April 1991 by Compaq , Microsoft , MIPS Computer Systems , Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO). Although the consortium's definition of the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) specification, indicating the details of an "open and scalable" hardware platform based on the MIPS architecture , was a significant focus of

264-525: A BIOS that duplicated the function of the IBM BIOS exactly but did not infringe on copyrights. The two early leaders in this last strategy were both start-up companies: Columbia Data Products and Compaq . They were the first to achieve reputations for very close compatibility with the IBM machines, which meant that they could run software written for the IBM machine without recompilation. Before long, IBM had

396-615: A clean room BIOS that was 100% compatible with IBM's, and from that time on any competent computer manufacturer could achieve IBM compatibility as a matter of routine. From around 1984, the market was fast growing but relatively stable. There was as yet no sign of the "Win" half of "Wintel," though Microsoft was achieving enormous revenues from DOS sales both to IBM and to an ever-growing list of other manufacturers who had agreed to buy an MS-DOS license for every machine they made, even those that shipped with competing products. As for Intel, every PC made either had an Intel processor or one made by

528-472: A $ 50 billion company by the year 2000, or to beat I.B.M. – but they didn't have anything to do with customers. The new C.E.O. should look at everything Eckhard acquired and ask: did the customer benefit from that. If the answer isn't yes, they should get rid of it." On one hand, Compaq had previously dominated the PC market with its price war but was now struggling against Dell , which sold directly to buyers, avoiding

660-453: A $ 71 million loss for that quarter, their first loss as a company, while the stock had dropped by over two-thirds. An analyst stated that "Compaq has made a lot of tactical errors in the last year and a half. They were trend-setters, now they are lagging". Canion initially believed that the 1990s recession was responsible for Compaq's declining sales but insisted that they would recover once the economy improved, however Pfeiffer's observation of

792-402: A bus type that would be open to all manufacturers, as fast as or faster than IBM's Microchannel, and yet still retain backward compatibility with ISA. This was the crucial turning point: the industry as a whole was no longer content to let IBM make all the major decisions about technical direction. In the event, the new EISA bus was itself a commercial failure beyond the high end: By the time

924-440: A chain of Mexican restaurants. Each invested $ 1,000 to form the company, which was founded with the temporary name Gateway Technology. The name "COMPAQ" was said to be derived from "Compatibility and Quality" but this explanation was an afterthought. The name was chosen from many suggested by Ogilvy & Mather , it being the name least rejected. The first Compaq PC was sketched out on a placemat by Ted Papajohn while dining with

1056-502: A foodservice distributor based in Chicago, and he informed Compaq's board that he accepted the offer. Rose, senior vice president and general manager of Compaq's Enterprise Computing group, resigned effective as of June 3 and was succeeded by Tandem veteran Enrico Pesatori. Rose was reportedly upset that he was not considered for the CEO vacancy, which became apparent once Michael Capellas

1188-429: A low-priced PC could be made in half the time and at lower cost than Canion's initiative. It was also believed that Canion's consensus-style management slowed the company's ability to react in the market, whereas Pfeiffer's autocratic style would be suited to price and product competition. Rosen initiated a 14-hour board meeting, and the directors also interviewed Pfeiffer for several hours without informing Canion. At

1320-529: A modified version of the ARC firmware (which it called ARCS ) in its systems. All SGI computers which run IRIX 6.1 or later (such as the Indy , Octane , etc. ) boot from an ARCS console (which uses the same drive naming conventions as Windows, accordingly). In addition, most of the various RISC-based computers designed to run Windows NT used versions of the ARC boot console to boot NT. Among these computers were: It

1452-501: A payment for every IBM-compatible machine the particular maker had ever made in the past. Many PC manufacturers signed up as PS/2 licensees. (Apricot, who had lost badly by persevering with their "better PC than IBM" strategy up until this time, was one of them, but there were many others.) Many others decided to hold off before committing themselves. Some major manufacturers, known as the Gang of Nine , decided to group together and decide on

SECTION 10

#1732772559698

1584-781: A policy of insisting on per-processor royalties, thus making competing operating systems unattractive to computer manufacturers and provoking regulatory scrutiny from the European Commission and US authorities, leading to an undertaking by Microsoft to cease such practices. However, the integration of DOS into Windows 95 was the masterstroke: not only were the other operating system vendors frozen out, Microsoft could now require computer manufacturers to comply with its demands on pain of higher prices (as when it required IBM to stop actively marketing OS/2 or else pay more than twice as much for Windows 95 as its competitor Compaq) or by withholding "Designed for Windows 95" endorsement (which

1716-445: A price range of "about $ 8,000 or $ 7,000 for a really usable system". At the time it was widely believed that RISC-based systems would maintain a price/performance advantage over the ad hoc Wintel systems. However, it was also widely believed that Windows NT would quickly displace many other operating systems through the combined effects of a wide selection of software and the ease of building Wintel machines that supported it. ACE

1848-513: A price war that they started." Subsequent earnings releases from Compaq's rivals, Dell, Gateway, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard suggested that the problems were not affecting the whole PC industry as Pfeiffer had suggested. Dell and Gateway sold direct, which helped them to avoid Compaq's inventory problems and compete on price without dealer markups, plus Gateway sold web access and a broad range of software tailored to small businesses. Hewlett-Packard's PC business had similar challenges like Compaq but this

1980-472: A religious education program at the University of St. Thomas. Murto had helped to organize the company's marketing and authorized-dealer distribution strategy, and held the post of senior vice president of sales since June 1985. Murto was succeeded by Ross A. Cooley, director of corporate sales. Cooley would report to Michael S. Swavely, vice president for marketing, who was given increased responsibility and

2112-641: A roadmap that could dissuade its customers from adopting RISC architectures. The main product of the ACE group is the Advanced RISC Computing specification, or ARC . It was initially based on MIPS-based computer hardware and firmware environment. Although ACE went defunct, and no computer was ever manufactured which fully complied with the ARC standard, the ARC system still exerts a widespread legacy in that all Microsoft Windows NT -based operating systems (such as Windows XP ) used ARC conventions for naming boot devices before Windows Vista . Further, SGI used

2244-470: A second source supplier under license from Intel. Intel and Microsoft had enormous revenues, Compaq and many other makers between them made far more machines than IBM, but the power to decide the shape of the personal computer rested firmly in IBM's hands. In 1987, IBM introduced the PS/2 computer line. Although the open architecture of the PC and its successors had been a great success for them, and they were

2376-412: A shakeup, which saw Eckhard Pfeiffer appointed president and CEO, serving through the 1990s. Ben Rosen provided the venture capital financing for the fledgling company and served as chairman of the board for 17 years from 1983 until September 28, 2000, when he retired and was succeeded by Michael Capellas , who served as its last chairman and CEO until its merger. Compaq was overtaken by Dell as

2508-493: A significant markup for more profits or discount for more sales, dealers had a major incentive to advertise Compaq. During its first year of sales (second year of operation), the company sold 53,000 PCs for sales of $ 111 million , the first start-up to hit the $ 100 million mark that fast. Compaq went public in 1983 on the NYSE and raised $ 67 million . In 1986, it enjoyed record sales of $ 329 million from 150,000 PCs, and became

2640-459: A soft marketing voice and a big financial stick was effective: Windows became the de facto standard . For the competing computer manufacturers, large or small, the only common factors to provide joint technical leadership were operating software from Microsoft, and CPUs from Intel. Over the following years, both firms in the Wintel partnership would attempt to extend their monopolies. Intel made

2772-406: A subset of the possible techniques as practicable (so as to be able to run on any hardware that ran CP/M), with a major part of the market now all using the same exact hardware (or a very similar clone of it) it was practical to take advantage of any and every hardware-specific feature offered by the IBM. Independent BIOS companies like Award , Chips and Technologies , and Phoenix began to market

SECTION 20

#1732772559698

2904-598: A successful major push into the motherboard and chipset markets—becoming the largest motherboard manufacturer in the world and, at one stage, almost the only chipset manufacturer—but badly fumbled its attempt to move into the graphics chip market, and (from 1991) faced sharp competition in its core CPU territory from AMD , Cyrix , VIA and Transmeta . Microsoft fared better. In 1990, Microsoft had two competitors in its core market (Digital Research and IBM), Intel had none. By 1996, Intel had two competitors in its core market (CPUs), while Microsoft had none. Microsoft had pursued

3036-483: A table to write a letter to the president, someone has to write the letter. Compaq is sitting down at the typewriter". Michael S. Swavely, president of Compaq's North American division since May 1989, took a six-month sabbatical in January 1991 (which would eventually become retirement effective on July 12, 1991). Eckhard Pfeiffer , then president of Compaq International, was named to succeed him. Pfeiffer also received

3168-433: A then-industry record of $ 9.6 billion. The merger made Compaq, at the time, the world's second largest computer maker in the world in terms of revenue behind IBM. Digital Equipment, which had nearly twice as many employees as Compaq while generating half the revenue, had been a leading computer company during the 1970s and early 1980s. However, Digital had struggled during the 1990s, with high operating costs. For nine years,

3300-740: Is investing in Linux , and Microsoft ported Windows 8 to the ARM architecture with Windows RT . In the strictest sense, "Wintel" refers only to computers that run Windows on an Intel processor. However, Wintel is now commonly used to refer to a system running a modern Microsoft operating system on any modern x86 -compatible CPU, manufactured by either Intel or AMD. That is because the PC applications that can run on an x86 Intel processor usually can run on an x86 AMD processor too. In mid-October 2017, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 on Qualcomm Snapdragon

3432-464: Is still the dominant desktop and laptop computer architecture. There have been opinions that Microsoft Windows by its natural software bloat has eaten up much of the "hardware progress" that Intel processors gave to the "Wintel platform" via Moore's law . After the rise of smartphones and netbooks some media outlets have speculated predicting a possible end of Wintel dominance with more and more cheap devices employing other technologies. Intel

3564-438: Is the best way to merchandise those products. You remove the freedom from the dealers to really merchandise when you bundle in software. It is perceived by a lot of people as a marketing gimmick. You know, when you advertise a $ 3,000 computer with $ 3,000 worth of free software, it obviously can't be true. The software should stand on its merits and be supported and so should the hardware. Why should you be constrained to use

3696-451: Is the only one remaining on the market. Others (such as Digital , then the world's second-largest computer company, Hewlett-Packard, and Apricot ) concentrated on making similar but technically superior models. Other early market leaders (such as Tandy-Radio Shack or Texas Instruments) stayed with outdated architectures and proprietary operating systems for some time before belatedly realizing which way market trends were going and switching to

3828-583: The CP/M-86 operating system, but these accidents were to have enormous significance in later years. Because the IBM PC was an IBM product with the IBM badge, personal computers became respectable. It became easier for a business to justify buying a microcomputer than it had been even a year or two before, and easiest of all to justify buying the IBM Personal Computer . Since the PC architecture

3960-576: The Deskpro , a 16-bit desktop computer using an Intel 8086 microprocessor running at 7.14  MHz . It was considerably faster than an IBM PC and was, like the original Compaq Portable , also capable of running IBM software. It was Compaq's first non-portable computer and began the Deskpro line of computers. In 1986, Compaq introduced the Deskpro 386 , the first PC based on Intel 's new 80386 microprocessor. Bill Gates of Microsoft later said

4092-677: The UnixWare NonStop Clusters product in 1998. Minor acquisitions centered around building a networking arm and included NetWorth (1998) based in Irving, Texas and Thomas-Conrad (1998) based in Austin, Texas. In 1997, Microcom was also acquired, based in Norwood, MA, which brought a line of modems, Remote Access Servers (RAS) and the popular Carbon Copy software. In 1998, Compaq acquired Digital Equipment Corporation for

Advanced Computing Environment - Misplaced Pages Continue

4224-458: The Wintel computing platform. The upstart platforms did not offer enough performance improvement from the incumbent PC and there were major cost disadvantages of such systems due to the low volume production. When the initiative started, RISC based systems (running at 100-200 MHz at the time) had substantial performance advantages over Intel 80486 chips (running at approximately 60 MHz at

4356-416: The workstation leader, Sun Microsystems , to respond to gains by Hewlett-Packard and IBM, and to proliferate its own technologies. Compaq, Microsoft and SCO were perceived to be using it as a defensive strategy to prevent "Sun taking over the desktop and replacing Intel-architecture PCs with RISC, Unix SparcStations" with the consequent loss of opportunities for those companies. By joining the initiative, SCO

4488-700: The " Gang of Nine ", to develop EISA. Development of a truly mobile successor to the Portable line began in 1986, the company releasing two stopgap products in the meantime, the SLT (Compaq's first laptop ) and the Compaq Portable III (a lighter-weight, lunchbox-sized entry in the Portable line). In 1989, they introduced the LTE , their first notebook-sized laptop which competed with NEC 's UltraLite and Zenith Data Systems 's MinisPort . However, whereas

4620-463: The "20 to 30 percent premium" of MIPS-based systems less attractive to vendors such as Compaq and their customers. Although ACE originally supported the x86 architecture, customers were reportedly confused by an incoherent message around the different hardware and software options encompassed by the initiative. Consequently, an increased emphasis on the MIPS architecture "as an informal recognition of what

4752-514: The "A team", who controlled access to Pfeiffer. Gutsch was said to be a "master of corporate politics, pitting senior vice presidents against each other and inserting himself into parts of the company that normally would not be under his purview". Gutsch, who oversaw security, had an extensive security system and guard station installed on the eight floor of CCA-11, where the company's senior vice presidents worked. There were accusations that Gutsch and others sought to divide top management, although this

4884-510: The 32-bit optimized Pentium Pro and Microsoft's delivery of an unexpectedly high proportion of 16-bit code in Windows 95. Both firms talk with one another's competitors from time to time, most notably with Microsoft's close relationship with AMD and the development of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition utilizing AMD-designed 64-bit extensions to the x86 architecture, and Intel's decision to sell its processors to Apple Inc. The Wintel platform

5016-400: The ACE effort. MIPS wanted to reverse the fragmentation seen with existing MIPS-based systems that had limited wider adoption of the architecture. Various semiconductor companies, particularly "giants" such as Toshiba and NEC, were perceived as embracing the initiative to establish themselves and to take market share from Intel. DEC used the initiative as an attempt to take market share away from

5148-567: The Compaq Plus with a 10  MB hard drive, PC Magazine wrote of "the reputation for compatibility it built with its highly regarded floppy disk portable". Compaq computers remained the most compatible PC clones into 1984, and maintained its reputation for compatibility for years, even as clone BIOSes became available from Phoenix Technologies and other companies that also reverse engineered IBM's design, then sold their version to clone manufacturers. On June 28, 1984, Compaq released

5280-537: The European market noted that it was competition as rivals could match Compaq at a fraction of the cost. Under pressure from Compaq's board to control costs as staff was ballooning at their Houston headquarters despite falling U.S. sales, while the number of non-U.S. employees had stayed constant, Compaq made its first-ever layoffs (1400 employees which was 12% of its workforce) while Pfeiffer was promoted to EVP and COO. Rosen and Canion had disagreed about how to counter

5412-532: The IBM PC, to other computer manufacturers. The only part which had to be duplicated was the BIOS , which Compaq did legally by using clean room design at a cost of $ 1 million . Unlike other companies, Compaq did not bundle application software with its computers. Vice President of Sales and Service H. L. Sparks said in early 1984: We've considered it, and every time we consider it we reject it. I don't believe and our dealer network doesn't believe that bundling

Advanced Computing Environment - Misplaced Pages Continue

5544-458: The Internet had overtaken Compaq's management team, saying "As a company engaged in transforming its industry for the Internet era, we must have the organizational flexibility necessary to move at Internet speed." In a statement, Pfeiffer said "Compaq has come a long way since I joined the company in 1983" and "under Ben's guidance, I know this company will realize its potential." Rosen's priority

5676-589: The LTE was the first commercially successful notebook computer, helping launch the burgeoning industry. It was a direct influence on both Apple and IBM for the development of their own notebook computers, the PowerBook and ThinkPad , respectively. By 1989, The New York Times wrote that being the first to release a 80386-based personal computer made Compaq the leader of the industry and "hurt no company more - in prestige as well as dollars - than" IBM. The company

5808-607: The PC chassis at its plant in Shenzhen , China to cut costs. In 1996, instead of expanding its own plant, Compaq asked a Taiwanese supplier to set up a new factory nearby to produce the mechanicals, with the Taiwanese supplier owning the inventory until it reached Compaq in Houston. Pfeiffer also introduced a new distribution strategy, to build PCs made-to-order which would eliminate the stockpile of computers in warehouses and cut

5940-594: The Pentium, and increasing availability of Unix software for the Intel architecture. This was followed in short order by SCO announcing that they were suspending all work on moving their version of Unix to the MIPS platform. Canion's departure from Compaq had precipitated the dissolution of a technology development agreement between Compaq and SGI in early 1992 that had been established for the co-development of MIPS-based computers, although Compaq denied that this would result in

6072-412: The U. S. such that European dealers were more qualified to handle its increasingly complex products. During the 1980s, under Canion's direction Compaq had focused on engineering, research, and quality control, producing high-end, high-performance machines with high profit margins that allowed Compaq to continue investing in engineering and next-generation technology. This strategy was successful as Compaq

6204-584: The UltraLite and MinisPort failed to gain much uptake due to their novel but nonstandard data storage technologies, the LTE succeeded on account of its use of the conventional floppy drive and spinning hard drive, allowing users to transfer data to and from their desktop computers without any hassle. As well, Compaq began offering docking stations with the release of the LTE/386s in 1990, providing performance comparable to then-current desktop machines. Thus,

6336-451: The acquisition of Digital as the cultural differences between both companies were too great, and complained that he was placed on the "B team" as a result. Compaq entered 1999 with strong expectations. Fourth-quarter 1998 earnings reported in January 1999 beat expectations by six cents a share with record 48 percent growth. The company launched Compaq.com as the key for its new direct sales strategy, and planned an IPO for AltaVista toward

6468-433: The agile business". In 1981, IBM entered the microcomputer market. The IBM PC was created by a small subdivision of the firm. It was unusual for an IBM product because it was largely sourced from outside component suppliers and was intended to run third-party operating systems and software. IBM published the technical specifications and schematics of the PC, which allowed third-party companies to produce compatible hardware,

6600-445: The best-selling personal computer in the world and at least two of the next-best sellers were, for practical purposes, identical. For the software industry, the effect was profound. First, it meant that it was rational to write for the IBM PC and its clones as a high priority, and port versions for less common systems at leisure. Second (and even more importantly), when a software writer in pre-IBM days had to be careful to use as plain

6732-468: The biggest single manufacturer, most of the market was buying faster and cheaper IBM-compatible machines made by other firms. The PS/2s remained software compatible, but the hardware was quite different. It introduced the technically superior Micro Channel architecture bus for higher speed communication within the system, but failed to maintain the open AT bus (later called the ISA bus ), which meant that none of

SECTION 50

#1732772559698

6864-475: The cheaper Asian PC imports, as Canion wanted Compaq to build lower cost PCs with components developed in-house in order to preserve Compaq's reputation for engineering and quality, while Rosen believed that Compaq needed to buy standard components from suppliers and reach the market faster. While Canion developed an 18-month plan to create a line of low-priced computers, Rosen sent his own Compaq engineering team to Comdex without Canion's knowledge and discovered that

6996-514: The combined companies should do, or indeed how the three dramatically different cultures could work as a single entity, and Compaq struggled from strategy indecisiveness and lost focus, as a result being caught in between the low end and high end of the market. Mark Anderson, president of Strategic News Service, a research firm based in Friday Harbor, Wash. was quoted as saying, "The kind of goals he had sounded good to shareholders – like being

7128-521: The combined company would have to lay off 2,000 employees from Compaq and 15,000 from Digital which would potentially hurt morale. Furthermore, Compaq fell behind schedule in integrating Digital's operations, which also distracted the company from its strength in low-end PCs where it used to lead the market in rolling out next-generation systems which let rival Dell grab market share. Reportedly Compaq had three consulting firms working to integrate Digital alone. However, Pfeiffer had little vision for what

7260-665: The company had lost money or barely broke even, and had recently refocused itself as a "network solutions company". In 1995, Compaq had considered a bid for Digital but only became seriously interested in 1997 after Digital's major divestments and refocusing on the Internet. At the time of the acquisition, services accounted for 45 percent of Digital's revenues (about $ 6 billion) and their gross margins on services averaged 34 percent, considerably higher than Compaq's 25% margins on PC sales and also satisfying customers who had demanded more services from Compaq for years. Compaq had originally wanted to purchase only Digital's services business but that

7392-463: The company should no longer use profits from high-margin businesses to carry marginally profitable ones, as instead each unit must show a return on investment. Pfeiffer's vision was to make Compaq a full-fledged computer company, moving beyond its main business of manufacturing retail PCs and into the more lucrative business services and solutions that IBM did well at, such as computer servers which would also require more "customer handholding" from either

7524-449: The company withdrawing from the ACE consortium, which happened only months later. There were other potential conflicts and difficulties for the consortium. In early 1992, SGI had announced its intention to acquire MIPS Computer Systems, leading vendors such as Control Data ("the largest OEM customer of both MIPS and SGI") to consider switching to other architectures over concerns about this pending acquisition and SGI's resulting control over

7656-459: The company's annual meeting for selling stock before reporting the sales slowdown. Rose was succeeded by SVP Enrico Pesatori, who had previously worked as a senior executive at Olivetti , Zenith Data Systems , Digital Equipment Corporation , and Tandem Computers . Capellas was appointed COO after pressure mounted on Rosen to find a permanent CEO, however it was reported that potential candidates did not want to work under Rosen as chairman. Around

7788-587: The company's field sales organization after starting up the Western U.S. Area of Operations. These executives, along with other key contributors, including Kevin Ellington, Douglas Johns, Steven Flannigan, and Gary Stimac, helped the company compete against the IBM Corporation in all personal computer sales categories, after many predicted that none could compete with the behemoth. The soft-spoken Canion

7920-588: The company's meteoric growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s were Ross A. Cooley, another former IBM associate, who served for many years as SVP of GM North America; Michael Swavely, who was the company's chief marketing officer in the early years, and eventually ran the North America organization, later passing along that responsibility to Cooley when Swavely retired. In the United States, Brendan A. "Mac" McLoughlin (another long time IBM executive) led

8052-457: The components inventory down to two weeks, with the supply chain from supplier to dealer linked by complex software. Vice-president for Corporate Development Kenneth E. Kurtzman assembled five teams to examine Compaq's businesses and assess each unit's strategy and that of key rivals. Kurtzman's teams recommended to Pfeiffer that each business unit had to be first or second in its market within three years—or else Compaq should exit that line. Also,

SECTION 60

#1732772559698

8184-625: The computer industry. IBM would belatedly amend the PS/2 series with the PS/ValuePoint line, which tracked the features of the emerging ad hoc platform. At around this same time, the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, Microsoft's Windows operating environment started to become popular, and Microsoft's competitor Digital Research started to recover a share of the DOS press and DOS market with DR-DOS . IBM planned to replace DOS with

8316-508: The conclusion, the board was unanimous in picking Pfeiffer over Canion. As Canion was popular with company workers, 150 employees staged an impromptu protest with signs stating "We love you, Rod." and taking out a newspaper ad saying "Rod, you are the wind beneath our wings. We love you." Canion declined an offer to remain on Compaq's board and was bitter about his ouster as he did not speak to Rosen for years, although their relationship became cordial again. In 1999, Canion admitted that his ouster

8448-429: The consortium included Acer , Control Data Corporation , Kubota , NEC Corporation , NKK , Olivetti , Prime Computer , Pyramid Technology , Siemens , Silicon Graphics , Sony , Sumitomo , Tandem Computers , Wang Laboratories , and Zenith Data Systems . Besides these large companies, several startup companies built ACE-compliant systems as well. Each of the companies involved had their own reasons for joining

8580-484: The cost of implementing EISA was reduced to the extent that it would be implemented in most desktop PCs, the much cheaper VESA Local Bus had removed most of the need for it in desktop PCs (though it remained common in servers due to for example the possibility of data corruption on hard disk drives attached to VLB controllers), and Intel's PCI bus was just around the corner. But although very few EISA systems were sold, it had achieved its purpose: IBM no longer controlled

8712-655: The dealer channel and its markup, and built each machine to order to keep inventories and costs at a minimum. At the same time, Compaq, through its acquisitions of the Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998 and Tandem Computers in 1997, had tried to become a major systems company, like IBM and Hewlett-Packard. While IBM and HP were able generate repeat business from corporate customers to drive sales of their different divisions, Compaq had not yet managed to make its newly acquired sales and services organizations work as seamlessly. In early 1998, Compaq had

8844-587: The dealers or Compaq staff themselves. Unlike IBM and HP, Compaq would not build up field technicians and programmers in-house as those could be costly assets, instead Compaq would leverage its partnerships (including those with Andersen Consulting and software maker SAP) to install and maintain corporate systems. This allowed Compaq to compete in the "big-iron market" without incurring the costs of running its own services or software businesses. Most of Compaq's server sales were for systems that would be running Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, and indeed Compaq

8976-603: The early 1980s, the chaos and incompatibility that was rife in the early microcomputer market had given way to a smaller number of de facto industry standards, including the S-100 bus expansion board, the CP/M operating system, the Apple II home computer, the use of the programming language Microsoft BASIC in read-only memory (ROM), and the 5 + 1 ⁄ 4 inch floppy drive storage medium. Firms competed fiercely to control

9108-536: The end of 1999 in order to capitalize on the dotcom bubble. However, by February 1999, analysts were sceptical of Compaq's plan to sell both direct and to resellers. Compaq was hit with two class-action lawsuits, as a result of CFO Earl Mason, SVP John Rose, and other executives selling US$ 50 million of stock before a conference call with analysts, where they noted that demand for PCs was slowing down. On April 17, 1999, just nine days after Compaq reported first-quarter profit being at half of what analysts had expected,

9240-470: The fastest-growing part of the computer hardware market. Compaq also built up a network engineering and marketing staff. In 1996, despite record sales and profits at Compaq, Pfeiffer initiated a major management shakeup in the senior ranks. John T. Rose, who previously ran Compaq's desktop PC division, took over the corporate server business from SVP Gary Stimac who had resigned. Rose had joined Compaq in 1993 from Digital Equipment Corporation where he oversaw

9372-534: The first IBM PC compatible computers, being the second company after Columbia Data Products to legally reverse engineer the BIOS of the IBM Personal Computer . It rose to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s. The company was initially based in Harris County, Texas . The company was formed by Rod Canion , Jim Harris , and Bill Murto , all of whom were former Texas Instruments senior managers. All three had left by 1991 under

9504-406: The first CPU change to the PC platform that was not initiated by IBM. Compaq had concluded, according to PC , that it could do so because "IBM's DOS standard is now bigger than IBM"; IBM could not make changes to the PC architecture it had created to hurt Compaq, without also obsoleting millions of real IBM PCs. An IBM-made 386 machine reached the market almost a year later, but by that time Compaq

9636-409: The first day of trading after the first-quarter announcement and closed the following Friday at $ 23.62 . During three out of the last six quarters of Pfeiffer's tenure, the company's revenues or earnings had missed expectations. While rival Dell had 55% growth in U.S. PC sales in the first quarter of 1999, Compaq could only manage 10%. Rosen suggested that the accelerating change brought about by

9768-422: The folks at IBM didn't trust the 386. They didn't think it would get done. So we encouraged Compaq to go ahead and just do a 386 machine. That was the first time people started to get a sense that it wasn't just IBM setting the standards, that this industry had a life of its own, and that companies like Compaq and Intel were in there doing new things that people should pay attention to. The Compaq 386 computer marked

9900-599: The founders in a pie shop, (named House of Pies in Houston). Their first venture capital came from Benjamin M. Rosen and Sevin Rosen Funds , who helped the fledgling company secure $ 1.5 million to produce their initial computer. Overall, the founders managed to raise $ 25 million from venture capitalists, as this gave stability to the new company as well as providing assurances to the dealers or middlemen. Unlike many startups, Compaq differentiated its offerings from

10032-459: The industry, and innovation in hardware and software was the rule. Microsoft Windows and Intel processors gained ascendance and their ongoing alliance gave them market dominance. Intel has claimed that this partnership has enabled the two companies to give customers the benefit of "a seemingly unending spiral of falling prices and rising performance". In addition, they claim a "history of innovation" and "a shared vision of flexible computing for

10164-488: The initiative was a competitive threat to Intel, forcing the company "to take greater steps to accommodate its customers". Indeed, one reported motivation for Compaq's involvement in ACE was to "light a fire under Intel" and get the company to produce a roadmap that was competitive enough for Compaq's customers. Intel's response was to accelerate the delivery of the Pentium and to pursue parallel development of three generations of future products ( P5 , P6 and P7), thus providing

10296-479: The initiative, the "key force" behind it was said to be Compaq recognising that it needed to pursue a strategy with MIPS in order to compete in the emerging personal workstation market. A week prior to the ACE announcement, Compaq had entered into a relationship with Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) involving an investment in SGI, the payment of advance royalties, and a strategy to co-develop low-cost workstation systems targeting

10428-486: The introduction of SVR4 complicated the position of DEC and SCO whose involvement focused on SCO Open Desktop built on the OSF/1 kernel. However, the availability of SVR4 was regarded as a way of satisfying end-user demand, particularly by Compaq. Even so, the ACE initiative (and consortium) began to fall apart little more than a year after it started, as it became apparent that there was not a mass market for an alternative to

10560-436: The latest in a string of earnings disappointments, Pfeiffer was forced to resign as CEO in a coup led by board chairman Ben Rosen . Reportedly, at the special board meeting held on April 15, 1999, the directors were unanimous in dismissing Pfeiffer. The company's stock had fallen 50 percent since its all-time high in January 1999. Compaq shares, which traded as high as $ 51.25 early in 1999, dropped 23 percent on April 12, 1999,

10692-465: The many other IBM PC clones by not focusing mainly on price, but instead concentrating on new features, such as portability and better graphics displays as well as performance—and all at prices comparable to those of IBM's PCs. In contrast to Dell and Gateway 2000 , Compaq hired veteran engineers with an average of 15 years experience, which lent credibility to Compaq's reputation of reliability among customers. Due to its partnership with Intel , Compaq

10824-540: The means to provide portability between the MIPS and Intel architectures. Since SVR4 favoured big-endian operation, this subgroup of members was known as the Apache group, reportedly conceived as a pun on "Big Indian". At that early stage, a different group known as the Gibraltar group, consisting primarily of DEC and SCO, sought to define interoperability with DEC's Ultrix operating system. The Apache group later adopted

10956-411: The millions of existing add-in cards would function. In other words, the new IBM machines were not IBM-compatible. Further, IBM planned the PS/2 in such a way that for both technical and legal reasons it would be very difficult to clone. Instead, IBM offered to sell a PS/2 licence to anyone who could afford the royalty. They would not only require a royalty for every PS/2-compatible machine sold, but also

11088-418: The monitors that they offered to customers of their Deskpro and Presario lines as standalone units to third-party resellers, including their popular 171FS monitor. On June 26, 1995, Compaq reached an agreement with Cisco Systems, Inc. , in order to get into networking, including digital modems, routers, and switches favored by small businesses and corporate departments, which was now a $ 4 billion business and

11220-409: The most successful long-term business strategy, which was to build a machine that duplicated the IBM PC as closely as possible and sell it for a slightly lower price, or with higher performance. Given the very conservative engineering of the early IBM personal computers and their higher than average prices, this was not a terribly difficult task at first, bar only the great technical challenge of crafting

11352-404: The name MIPS ABI after the demise of the ACE initiative. The emerging rift within the ACE consortium was averted when it was decided to add support for SVR4 alongside OSF/1, thus placating the group which, by then, included Siemens, Sony, NEC, Prime Computer, Olivetti, Tandem and Pyramid among its members. Although concerns persisted about the domination of the initiative by the founding members,

11484-547: The networking market (formerly the domain of Artisoft 's LANtastic and Novell 's NetWare ) with Windows NT , and the business application market (formerly led by Lotus and WordPerfect ) with Microsoft Office . Although Microsoft is by far the dominant player in the Wintel partnership now, Intel's continuing influence should not be underestimated. Intel and Microsoft, once the closest of partners, have operated at an uneasy distance from one another since their first major dispute, which had to do with Intel's heavy investment in

11616-531: The organization has really been doing all along" was envisaged, focusing more on ARC as a way of delivering MIPS-based hardware. In April 1992, the ACE Executive Advisory Board refocused the initiative on systems software availability for the ARC platform. Intel was never itself a member of ACE, with its processor architecture having been introduced to the effort by Compaq. Since MIPS had been seeking to gain market share at Intel's expense,

11748-508: The original AT bus—which it renamed ISA —instead of licensing IBM's MCA. Prior to developing EISA Compaq had invested significant resources into reverse engineering MCA, but its executives correctly calculated that the $ 80 billion already spent by corporations on IBM-compatible technology would make it difficult for even IBM to force manufacturers to adopt the new MCA design. Instead of cloning MCA, Compaq led an alliance with Hewlett Packard and seven other major manufacturers, known collectively as

11880-492: The personal computer division and worldwide engineering, while Stimac had been with Compaq since 1982 and was one of the longest-serving executives. Senior Vice-president for North America Ross Cooley announced his resignation effective at the end of 1996. CFO Daryl J. White, who joined the company in January, 1983 resigned in May, 1996 after 8 years as CFO. Michael Winkler, who joined Compaq in 1995 to run its portable computer division,

12012-562: The problem of bloated PC inventories. By summer 1998, Compaq was suffering from product-quality problems. Robert W. Stearns, SVP of Business Development, said "In [Pfeiffer's] quest for bigness, he lost an understanding of the customer and built what I call empty market share—large but not profitable", while Jim Moore, a technology strategy consultant with GeoPartners Research in Cambridge, Mass., says Pfeiffer "raced to scale without having economies of scale." The "colossus" that Pfeiffer built up

12144-625: The release of Windows 3.0 in 1990.) Compaq's technical leadership and the rivalry with IBM was emphasized when the SystemPro server was launched in late 1989 – this was a true server product with standard support for a second CPU and RAID , but also the first product to feature the EISA bus, designed in reaction to IBM's MCA ( Micro Channel Architecture ) which was incompatible with the original AT bus. Although Compaq had become successful by being 100 percent IBM-compatible, it decided to continue with

12276-571: The retail computer market with the Compaq Presario as one of the first manufacturers in the mid-1990s to market a sub-$ 1000 PC. In order to maintain the prices it wanted, Compaq became the first first-tier computer manufacturer to utilize CPUs from AMD and Cyrix . The two price wars resulting from Compaq's actions ultimately drove numerous competitors from the market, such as Packard Bell and AST Research . From third place in 1993, Compaq had overtaken Apple Computer and even surpassed IBM as

12408-435: The same time Pesatori was placed in charge of the newly created Enterprise Solutions and Services Group, making him Compaq's second most powerful executive in operational responsibility after Capellas. Wintel Wintel ( portmanteau of Windows and Intel ) is the partnership of Microsoft Windows and Intel producing personal computers (PCs) using Intel x86 -compatible processors running Microsoft Windows. By

12540-414: The separate position of Compaq president. The board complained that Pfeiffer was too removed from management and the rank-and-file, as he surrounded himself with a "clique" of Chief Financial Officer Earl Mason, Senior Vice-President John T. Rose, and Senior Vice-President of Human Resources Hans Gutsch. Current and former Compaq employees complained that Gutsch was part of a group of senior executives, dubbed

12672-476: The so-called open architecture . The IBM PC became one of the most successful computers of all time. The key feature of the IBM PC was that it had IBM's enormous public respect behind it. It was an accident of history that the IBM PC happened to have an Intel CPU (instead of the technically superior Motorola 68000 that had been tipped for it, or an IBM in-house design), and that it shipped with IBM PC DOS (a licensed version of Microsoft's MS-DOS ) rather than

12804-452: The software that comes with a piece of hardware? I think it can tend to inhibit sales over the long run. Compaq instead emphasized PC compatibility, of which Future Computing in May 1983 ranked Compaq as among the "Best" examples. "Many industry observers think [Compaq] is poised for meteoric growth", The New York Times reported in March of that year. By October, when the company announced

12936-565: The target platform. DEC had released their Alpha processor and were less interested in promoting a competing architecture, indicating continued low-end support for MIPS, but exhibiting a lack of commitment to future products, notably in relation to the MIPS R4000 line of processors and support for OSF/1 on the company's DECstation products. Meanwhile, the accelerated delivery and anticipated performance improvements of Intel's upcoming Pentium processor, combined with more competitive pricing, made

13068-416: The time of Rando's departure, Compaq Services ranked third behind those of IBM and EDS, while slightly ahead of Hewlett-Packard 's and Andersen Consulting , however customers switched from Digital technology-based workstations to those of HP, IBM, and Sun Microsystems. Mason, senior vice president and chief financial officer, had previously been offered the job of chief executive of Alliant Foodservice, Inc.,

13200-413: The time), but the Pentium promised to reduce such advantages. Compaq was the first company to leave the consortium, stating that with the departure of CEO Rod Canion , one of the primary backers behind the formation of ACE, they were shifting priorities away from higher-end systems. Other factors included Compaq's ongoing restructuring amidst disappointing financial results, the accelerated introduction of

13332-474: The title of chief operating officer, with responsibility for the company's operations on a worldwide basis, so that Canion could devote more time to strategy. Swavely's abrupt departure in January led to rumors of turmoil in Compaq's executive suite, including friction between Canion and Swavely, likely as Swavely's rival Pfeiffer had received the number two leadership position. Swavely's U.S. marketing organization

13464-546: The title of vice president for sales and marketing. In November 1982, Compaq announced their first product, the Compaq Portable , a portable IBM PC compatible personal computer . It was released in March 1983 at $ 2,995 . The Compaq Portable was one of the progenitors of today's laptop ; some called it a "suitcase computer" for its size and the look of its case. It was the second IBM PC compatible, being capable of running all software that would run on an IBM PC . It

13596-455: The top PC manufacturer in 1994, as both IBM and Apple were struggling considerably during that time. Compaq's inventory and gross margins were better than that of its rivals which enabled it to wage the price wars. Compaq had decided to make a foray into printers in 1989, and the first models were released to positive reviews in 1992. However, Pfeiffer saw that the prospects of taking on market leader Hewlett-Packard (who had 60% market share)

13728-417: The top global PC maker in 1999, which took Compaq several months to take the top spot again in 2000 before eventually being overtaken by Dell again in 2001. Struggling to keep up in the price wars against Dell, as well as with a risky acquisition of DEC , Compaq was acquired by Hewlett-Packard (HP) for US$ 25 billion in 2002. The Compaq brand remained in use by HP for lower-end systems until 2013 when it

13860-412: The vastly superior OS/2 (originally an IBM/Microsoft joint venture, and unlike the PS/2 hardware, highly backward compatible), but Microsoft preferred to push the industry in the direction of its own product, Windows. With IBM suffering its greatest ever public humiliation in the wake of the PS/2 disaster, massive financial losses, and a marked lack of company unity or direction, Microsoft's combination of

13992-507: The youngest-ever firm to make the Fortune 500 . In 1985, sales reached $ 504 million. In 1987, Compaq hit the $ 1 billion revenue mark, taking the least amount of time to reach that milestone. By 1991, Compaq held the fifth place spot in the PC market with $ 3 billion in sales that year. Two key marketing executives in Compaq's early years, Jim D'Arezzo and Sparky Sparks, had come from IBM's PC Group . Other key executives responsible for

14124-426: Was a commercial success, selling 53,000 units in its first year and generating $ 111 million in sales revenue. The Compaq Portable was the first in the range of the Compaq Portable series . Compaq was able to market a legal IBM clone because IBM mostly used "off the shelf" parts for their PC . Furthermore, Microsoft had kept the right to license MS-DOS , the most popular and de facto standard operating system for

14256-441: Was a key player during the merger discussions and the most senior executive from Digital to remain with Compaq after the acquisition closed and had been touted by some as the heir-apparent to Pfeiffer. Rando's division had performed strongly as it had sales of $ 1.6 billion for the first quarter compared to $ 113 million in 1998, which met expectations and was anticipated to post accelerated and profitable growth going forward. At

14388-423: Was able to broaden its portfolio to RISC platforms alongside its existing Intel platform products, and Microsoft needed vendor support for its "Portable OS/2", later Windows NT, strategy. Even prior to the announcement of the initiative, a number of companies headed by Compaq and including Siemens, Sony, Silicon Graphics, Unisys and Control Data Corporation favoured the adoption of Unix System V Release 4 ( SVR4 ) as

14520-436: Was able to maintain a technological lead in the market place as it was the first one to come out with computers containing the next generation of each Intel processor . Under Canion's direction, Compaq sold computers only through dealers to avoid potential competition that a direct sales channel would foster, which helped foster loyalty among resellers. By giving dealers considerable leeway in pricing Compaq's offerings, either

14652-603: Was also predicted that Intel IA-32 -based computers would adopt the ARC console, although only SGI ever marketed such IA-32-based machines with ARC firmware (namely, the SGI Visual Workstation series, which went on sale in 1999). Products complying (to some degree) with the ARC standard include: Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of

14784-502: Was at its height. CEO Pfeiffer boldly predicted that the Microsoft/Intel "Wintel" duopoly would be replaced by "Wintelpaq". Pfeiffer also made several major and some minor acquisitions. In 1997, Compaq bought Tandem Computers , known for their NonStop server line. This acquisition instantly gave Compaq a presence in the higher end business computing market. The alliance between Compaq and SCO took advantage of this to put out

14916-517: Was considered a trusted brand, while many other IBM clones were untrusted due to being plagued by poor reliability. However, by the end of the eighties many manufacturers had improved their quality and were able to produce inexpensive PCs with off-the-shelf components, incurring none of the R&;D costs which allowed them to undercut Compaq's expensive computers. Faced with lower-cost rivals such as Dell , AST Research , and Gateway 2000 , Compaq suffered

15048-599: Was discontinued. As of 2024 , the brand is currently licensed to third parties for use on electronics in Brazil and India. Compaq was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion , Jim Harris , and Bill Murto, three senior managers from semiconductor manufacturer Texas Instruments . The three of them had left due to lack of faith and loss of confidence in TI's management, and initially considered but ultimately decided against starting

15180-566: Was formed to provide an alternative platform to Wintel, providing a viable alternative with the same advantages in terms of software support, and greater advantages in terms of performance. The environment standardized on two hardware platforms: a personal computer platform based on the Intel 80386 and 80486 processors, and a workstation platform based on the ARC specification. To be supported by both hardware platforms were two operating systems : SCO UNIX with Open Desktop and what would become Windows NT (originally named OS/2 3.0). Other members of

15312-476: Was given US$ 20,000 to start up Compaq Europe He started up Compaq's first overseas office in Munich in 1984. By 1990, Compaq Europe was a $ 2 billion business and number two behind IBM in that region, and foreign sales contributed 54 percent of Compaq's revenues. Pfeiffer, while transplanting Compaq's U.S. strategy of dealer-only distribution to Europe, was more selective in signing up dealers than Compaq had been in

15444-493: Was justified, saying "I was burned out. I needed to leave. He [Rosen] felt I didn't have a strong sense of urgency". Two weeks after Canion's ouster, five other senior executives resigned, including remaining company founder James Harris as SVP of Engineering. These departures were motivated by an enhanced severance or early retirement, as well as an imminent demotion as their functions were to be shifted to vice presidents. Under Pfeiffer's tenure as chief executive, Compaq entered

15576-592: Was losing ground with only 4% growth for Compaq versus 7% in the market, likely due to short supplies of the LTE 386s from component shortages, rivals that undercut Compaq's prices by as much as 35%, and large customers who did not like Compaq's dealer-only policy. Pfeiffer became president and CEO of Compaq later that year, as a result of a boardroom coup led by board chairman Ben Rosen that forced co-founder Rod Canion to resign as president and CEO. Pfeiffer had joined Compaq from Texas Instruments , and established operations from scratch in both Europe and Asia. Pfeiffer

15708-488: Was named COO. While Enterprise Computing, responsible for engineering and marketing of network servers, workstations and data-storage products, reportedly accounted for one third of Compaq's revenues and likely the largest part of its profits, it was responsible for the earnings shortfall in Q1 of 1999. In addition, Rose was part of the "old guard" close to former CEO Pfeiffer, and he and other Compaq executives had been criticized at

15840-417: Was not nimble enough to adapt to the fast-changing computer industry. That year Compaq forecast demand poorly and shipped too many PCs, causing resellers to dump them at fire sale prices, and since Compaq protected resellers from heavy losses it cost them two quarters of operating profits. Pfeiffer also refused to develop a potential successor, rebuffing Rosen's suggestion to recruit a few executives to create

15972-586: Was offset by HP's extremely lucrative printer business, while IBM sold PCs at a loss but used them to lock in multi-year services contracts with customers. After Pfeiffer's resignation, the board established an office of the CEO with a triumvirate of directors; Rosen as interim CEO and vice chairmen Frank P. Doyle and Robert Ted Enloe III. They began "cleaning house", as shortly afterward many of Pfeiffer's top executives resigned or were pushed out, including John J. Rando, Earl L. Mason, and John T. Rose. Rando, senior vice president and general manager of Compaq Services,

16104-543: Was popular with employees and the culture that he built helped Compaq to attract the best talent. Instead of headquartering the company in a downtown Houston skyscraper, Canion chose a West Coast-style campus surrounded by forests, where every employee had similar offices and no-one (not even the CEO) had a reserved parking spot. At semi-annual meetings, turnout was high as any employee could ask questions to senior managers. In 1987, company co-founder Bill Murto resigned to study at

16236-557: Was promoted to general manager of the new PC products group. Earl Mason, hired from Inland Steel effective in May 1996, immediately made an impact as the new CFO. Under Mason's guidance, Compaq utilized its assets more efficiently instead of focusing just on income and profits, which increased Compaq's cash from $ 700 million to nearly $ 5 billion in one year. Additionally, Compaq's return on invested capital (after-tax operating profit divided by operating assets) doubled to 50 percent from 25 percent in that period. Compaq had been producing

16368-454: Was regarded as an essential hardware marketing tool). Microsoft was also able to require that free publicity be given over to them by hardware makers. (For example, the Windows key advertising symbols on nearly all modern keyboards, or the strict license restrictions on what may or may not be displayed during system boot and on the Windows desktop.) Also, Microsoft was able to take over most of

16500-523: Was regarded by others as sour grapes on the part of executives who were shut out of planning that involved the acquisitions of Tandem Computers and Digital Equipment Corp. Pfeiffer reduced the size of the group working on the deal due to news leaks, saying "We cut the team down to the minimum number of people—those who would have to be directly involved, and not one person more". Robert W. Stearns, Compaq's senior vice president for business development, with responsibility for mergers and acquisitions, had opposed

16632-477: Was so influential that observers and its executives spoke of "Compaq compatible". InfoWorld reported that "In the [ISA market] Compaq is already IBM's equal in being seen as a safe bet", quoting a sell-side analyst describing it as "now the safe choice in personal computers". Even rival Tandy Corporation acknowledged Compaq's leadership, stating that within the Gang of Nine "when you have 10 people sit down before

16764-471: Was the 386 supplier of choice and IBM had lost some of its prestige. For the first three months after announcement, the Deskpro 386 shipped with Windows/386. This was a version of Windows 2.1 adapted for the 80386 processor. Support for the virtual 8086 mode was added by Compaq engineers. (Windows, running on top of the MS-DOS operating system, would not become a popular "operating environment" until at least

16896-609: Was the largest hardware supplier for Windows NT. However, some 20 percent of Compaq servers went for systems that would be running the Unix operating system . This was exemplified by a strategic alliance formed in 1997 between Compaq and the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), which was known for its server Unix operating system products on Intel-architecture-based hardware. Compaq was also the largest hardware supplier for SCO's Unix products, and some 10 percent of Compaq's ProLiant servers ran SCO's UnixWare . In January 1998, Compaq

17028-477: Was to have Compaq catchup as an E-commerce competitor, and he also moved to streamline operations and reduce the indecision that plagued the company. Roger Kay, an analyst at International Data Corporation, observed that Compaq's behavior at times seemed like a personal vendetta, noting that "Eckhard has been so obsessed with staying ahead of Dell that they focused too hard on market share and stopped paying attention to profitability and liquidity. They got whacked in

17160-505: Was tough, as that would force Compaq to devote more funds and people to that project than originally budgeted. Compaq ended up selling the printer business to Xerox and took a charge of $ 50 million. In 1994, Compaq formed a joint venture with ADI Corporation , a Taiwanese manufacturer who produced the bulk of Compaq's monitors, to raise multiple factories in Mexico, Brazil, and Europe to assemble and store ADI's monitors. Compaq sold many of

17292-465: Was turned down. When the announcement was made, it was initially viewed as a master stroke as it immediately gave Compaq a 22,000 person global service operation to help corporations handle major technological purchases (by 2001 services made up over 20% of Compaq's revenues, largely due to the Digital employees inherited from the merger), in order to compete with IBM. However it was also risky merger, as

17424-546: Was well documented in IBM's manuals, and PC DOS was designed to be similar to the earlier CP/M operating system, the PC soon had thousands of different third-party add-in cards and software packages available. This made the PC the preferred option for many, since the PC supported the hardware and software they needed. Industry competitors took one of several approaches to the changing market. Some (such as Apple , Amiga , Atari , and Acorn ) persevered with their independent and quite different systems. Of those systems, Apple's Mac

#697302