Source: Home Computer Weekly – Issue Number 15 – June 14-22, 1983
I’m not sure what the popularity of the TI-99/4A in the U.K was (my guess is not very) but that is where the above ad is from. Here in the U.S., it had a very brief period of popularity. This ad appeared in the June 14-22, 1983 issue of Home Computer Weekly. By this time, Texas Instruments had pretty much already lost the price war with Commodore and the TI-99/4A would be officially discontinued the following year.
The TI-99/4A was an early home computer designed by Texas Instruments. It was introduced in 1981 and competed with the Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, VIC-20 and later the Commodore 64. It was technically the first 16-bit personal computer (the processor was a TMS9900) but this provided limited benefits as the 16-bit processor was basically shoehorned into a system that had originally been designed for an 8-bit processor that TI failed to successfully produce. The TI-99/4A was superior to the VIC-20 in many ways but it could not compete on price. Commodore manufactured its own chips giving it a cost advantage. A little more than a year after the TI/99-4A was introduced, the Commodore 64 was released, which while arguably having a weaker CPU, had much better sound and graphics capabilities. The TI/99-4A did have a brief period of popularity and had up to a 35% market share for a short amount of time.
Texas Instruments was one of several victims of the price wars initiated by Commodore and the TI/99-4A was discontinued in 1984. Their marketing strategy was pretty poor and having Bill Cosby as a spokesman could only help so much. To compete, their plan was to sell the hardware at a loss and then make up the loss by selling software and peripherals that had higher profit margins. Unfortunately, for this plan to work they had to monopolize these markets and they prevented third party development. This had the predictable result of limiting software and hardware availability and quality. Other home computers of the time, particularly the Commodore 64, VIC-20 and Apple II enjoyed significant third party support.
While some of the games produced by TI were decent, there were too few and most were clones of more popular games. Application software did not fare much better. There were some interesting peripherals produced, including the voice synthesizer which many games supported.
The above ad is from the June 14-22, 1983 issue of Home Computer Weekly.
