BBC Micro - Market Impact

Market Impact

The machine was released as the BBC Microcomputer on 1 December 1981 – the BBC declines to confirm an official release date – and became known affectionately as the Beeb. The machine was popular in the UK, especially in the educational market: about 80 per cent of British schools had a BBC microcomputer. As with Sinclair's ZX Spectrum and Commodore's Commodore 64, both released later in 1982, demand greatly exceeded supply. For some months, there were long delays before customers received the machines they had ordered. Efforts were made to market the machine in the United States and Germany. By October 1983, the US operation reported that American schools had placed orders with it totalling $21 million. In October 1984, while preparing a major expansion of its US dealer network, Acorn claimed sales of 85 per cent of the computers in British schools, and delivery of 40,000 machines per month. That December, Acorn stated its intention to become the market leader in US educational computing. The New York Times considered the inclusion of local area networking to be of prime importance to teachers. The operation resulted in advertisements by at least one dealer in Interface Age magazine, but ultimately the attempt failed. The success of the machine in the UK was due largely to its acceptance as an "educational" computer – UK schools used BBC Micros to teach computer literacy, information technology skills and a generation of games programmers. Acorn became more known for its model B computer than for its other products. Some Commonwealth countries, including India, started their own Computer Literacy programs around 1987 and used the BBC Micro, a clone of which was produced by the Semiconductor Complex Limited and named the SCL Unicorn.

An advantage for the BBC Micro in the educational market was its durable construction. Both casing and keyboard were built solidly and able to cope with abuse by schoolchildren.

The Model A and the Model B were priced initially at £235 and £335 respectively, but increasing almost immediately to £299 and £399 due to increased costs. The Model B price of nearly £400 was roughly £1200 (€1393) in 2011 prices. Acorn anticipated the total sales to be around 12,000 units, but eventually more than 1.5 million BBC Micros were sold.

The cost of the BBC Models was high compared to competitors such as the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64, and from 1983 Acorn attempted to counter this by producing a simplified but largely compatible version intended for game playing, the 32K Acorn Electron.