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Commodore’s end was a train wreck of stupidity

by on13 October 2017


The craziest tech story ever told

Commodore was at the top of the world in the 1980s and yet the outfit tanked and few people know why. Now an insider in a Youtube interview has spilled the beans.

For a while there have been lots of books which have been penned by outsiders looking in, now in a You Tube video, former Commodore UK Managing Director David John Pleasance and Trevor Dickinson of A-EON Technology talk very frankly about how Commodore really failed and it turns out the reasons were self-inflicted craziness.

The first decision was a move to fire all Amiga engineers for no discernible reason and replace them with 40 IBM engineers who didn't understand multimedia computing.

Then the management refused to license the then-valuable Commodore Business Machines (CBM) brand to PC makers to generate an extra revenue stream.

Their favourite mistake was a new manager suddenly deciding to manufacture in the Philippines because he had a mistress there. After all, setting up shop where you can be guaranteed to get a shag without paying for it should be a motivating factor in any key important business decision.

The interview is a truly eye-opening preview of an upcoming book David John Pleasance is writing, called Commodore: The Inside Story. The book will, for the first time, chronicle the fall of Commodore from the insider perspective of an actual Commodore Managing Director.  The video teaser suggests it will be amusing reading.

 

Last modified on 13 October 2017
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