[Coco] Tandy Electronics??!!

[Nick Marentes]

On 2/01/2015 8:45 AM, Dave G4UGM wrote:
> Some one already owned the "Radio Shack" trading name in the UK when Tandy opened up their stores, so they traded as Tandy. Other than the name change, and some localization of product, the stores were virtually identical to their US counterparts. The stores all closed when Tandy Corp. decided they couldn't make a profit in the UK. I don't think the UK is a big deal for most US corporations. In general, for most goods the UK market is only about the size of a small to medium sized US state, so its loss isn't often a big deal.
>
> Dave
> G4UGM
>

I think that the UK computer market back in the 80's was very much tied 
up with all the British computers... Sinclair, Acorn, Amstrad etc.

British tend to buy British and I guess an American store like Tandy 
knew it was going to be a tough cookie to bite into.

Australia on the other hand was easy and Tandy did very well in 
Australia with over 700 store Australia wide. We only really had 1 true 
Australian computer... the Microbee and it was a small company.

Much of the Australian market was US driven although we did get our 
share of Sinclairs, Acorns and especially Amstrad.

Now, only the IBM and MAC architectures survive.

There are several OS's competing in the desktop world but Windows and 
Mac are really the global giants with Linux a distant third.

I loved the variety in the 80's but it's understandable that computers 
had to merge to become more widely accepted.

I still have my original CoCo3 and CM8 monitor next to my PC to remind 
me of those good times.   :)

Nick