JACK
TRAMIEL DECLARES WAR!
3 Enhanced 800XLs in '85?
by JAMES CAPPARELL,
MIKE CIRAOLO,
NAT FRIEDLAND
and GARY YOST
"When I get depressed, I watch the 'Patton' movie. I believe
in that. I don't think you can sit on your butt. You have to
know who your competitor is-who your enemy is. You have to have better
tanks. You have to have better equipment to be able to win.
And you can't just wait for the Pentagon to tell you what to do.
You have to do it."
-Jack Tramiel, Chairman of the Atari Corp., telling Antic about the philosophy behind his widely-quoted motto, "Business Is War."
Jack Tramiel expects to sell around 500,000
800XL's over the 1984 Christmas season. This would put Atari back
in the black after an $875 million loss from the previous 18 months.
Factories in Taiwan and Ireland are turning out 150,000 computers a month.
A new factory is being started in Japan. The company projects $1
billion sales for 1985.
As many as three upgraded all-compatible 800XL's-some with 128K
memory-are to be shown at the January 1985 Consumer Electronics Show.
Look for a self-contained, transportable 800XL, with built-in disk drive
and color monitor (like the Commodore SX64). XL-compatible 8-bit,
computers may eventually come in lap-sized and even hand-held models.
According to the new boss of Atari, in January Atari's first
16-bit computers will also be unveiled. The first, look at the new
32-bit Atari computers is to come at the April electronics fair in Hanover,
Germany.
50 MILLION COMPUTERS
Tramiel forecasts that some 50 million computers will be sold worldwide
in 1987-and more than half of these computers will cost less than $200.
"I was in this business before there was a microchip," the Atari
Corp. Chairman told Antic during an exclusive interview. "I came
up through the ranks with mechanical adding machines, electronic calculators
and then computers.
Tramiel started Commodore in 1955, brought out the second handheld
calculator, and won the company the biggest share of home computer sales.
In 1968-when calculators sold for $1,495-he predicted that the price would
drop to $9.95 within 10 years. "If anything, I was too conservative
then," he commented. "You get a good, basic calculator for even less
than $9.95 and 70 million calculators were sold last year."
And how does Atari fit into the coming mass computer market?
"My goal at Atari is to make the best computer at every meaningful price
point between $100 and $1,000," the Atari Corp. Chairman told Antic.
"Any competitor is welcome to approach our market," said Tramiel.
"But they have to be willing to work as hard and as efficiently, to take
as many risks, as we do."
WHAT SELLS BEST
To Tramiel it's an undeniable fact that the best computer value will
be the bestseller. " End-users are intelligent. They know what
they want and they know what it's worth," was a point he made several times
during the interview.
"We sell products to individuals-personal computers," said Tramiel.
"Our customers are from six to 26 years old. They know about computers
and they don't need to be educated by the advertising, the way IBM users
do."
In mid-November Tramiel and his top management team held their
first press conference, at Atari headquarters in Sunnyvale, California-to
announce the 800XL's new low $119.95 suggested list price.
Immediately following the feisty, free-swinging press conference,
Tramiel went into private interviews with a few selected publications,
including Antic.
This event ended four months of virtual silence since Tramiel
took over Atari in July, 1984. With a dramatically lowered price
and 150,000 800XL's being produced each month, Tramiel and his associates
seemed almost fanatically determined to show that the pressing problems
of the ownership change had been solved, and Atari was now reopening a
flow of information.
During an informal lunch following the press conference, Atari
Division Presidents and Vice Presidents (including two of Tramiel's three
Atari-employed sons) circulated freely and answered just about any questions
except the specific hardware details of the coming '85 Atari computers.
ATARI GETS GEM
For example, Atari Corp. President Sam Tramiel confirmed that their
new 16-bit and 32-bit computers will use the Macintosh-like icons of the
GEM operating environment from Digital Research, developers of CP/M.
The younger Tramiel said that GEM would be the user-friendly "front end"
to a new Atari proprietary operating system for the advanced machines.
At one point during lunch, Sam Tramiel reached over and borrowed
the napkin being used by Greg Pratt, president of Atari (U.S.) Corp. "We're
all family here," said Sam, echoing his father's earlier press conference
comment that the new Atari management was "like part of my family."
Pratt, a young CPA who was recently Director of Operations at
Commodore, had a direct answer to our inquiry about why so many of Commodore's
key managers had quit to resume working for their former boss. "Jack
Tramiel is a benevolent dictator," he laughed. "But he's the brightest
man I ever met."
Another young marketing manager who had stayed over from the
previous Atari ownership said, "Jack is always helping you, teaching you.
If you're on the wrong track, he'll ask you questions so you realize your
mistake."
TRAMIEL EXCLUSIVES
Upon meeting Jack Tramiel, it's hard to avoid thinking of "Little Caesar"
and the other classic Edward G. Robinson movies. Tramiel -born in
Poland in 1928 and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp-is short,
heavy, fastmoving, smokes big cigars, talks rapidly in a loud, booming
voice, laughs heartily and often.
Some of the significant points he made during the Antic interview
were:
- Atari is examining a cohesive new plan for national support of user groups.
- Advanced new modems are among the products being developed by Atari's Tokyo-based engineering group.
- Educational discount prices will be offered to schools from Atari by direct mail in 1985.
- Look for a full size color printer from Atari this year.
- New Atari software for the 800XL line won't cost more than $49.95.
"Our expertise over the years is in converting the best proven technology to the lowest price," he said. "In the next three years we will again take a very sophisticated product like the DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.) VAX superminicomputer and use state-of-the-art semiconductor technology to bring it down to a few chips for the personal computer customer."
The phenomenal new 32-bit NS32032 microchip from National Semiconductor would in fact make this possible. But there was silence around the interview table for a moment before we asked, "Did we hear you right? Are you actually saying that within three years Atari is going to market a small, user-friendly computer with the power of a VAX?"
"Yes!" said Jack Tramiel very firmly.