Tandy Offers New Computers

By Andrew Pollack
The New York Times

November 8, 1984

The Tandy Corporation, seeking to bolster its shrinking presence in the personal computer market, today will introduce an inexpensive computer compatible with the International Business Machines Corporation's PC.

The Tandy 1000 will be priced at $1,200 for a model including a single floppy disk drive and 128,000 bytes of internal memory. The price also includes Deskmate, a program that combines six applications including word-processing, filing, calendar and a spreadsheet.

Tandy, which owns the Radio Shack chain of electronics stores, said the computer will be available immediately. The introduction is thus likely to put increased Christmas selling season competition on Apple, whose Apple II line dominates the market in the $1,000 to $1,500 price range for computers that straddle both home and office use.

I.B.M. is also in that market with the PCjr, which it is aggressively promoting. John Roach, Tandy chairman and chief executive, said he expects the Tandy machine to do better than the PCjr, which has so far not sold well. ''It's first a good office machine and then also a home machine, as opposed to PCjr, which is primarily a home machine,'' he said.

The new machine is further evidence of Tandy's move into the I.B.M. camp. Last month it introduced the 1200 HD, a computer with a hard disk compatible with I.B.M.'s PC-XT.

Tandy, once a leader in the personal computer business, has slipped behind I.B.M. and Apple, and its earnings have been hurt. In the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company reported a 37 percent decline in net income, to $37.4 million.

Part of the problem is that by using its own operating system, Tandy isolated itself from the mainstream of the market, which was adopting the I.B.M. standard. In addition, thousands of independent computer stores have sprung up in the last few years, so nullifying the distribution advantage that Tandy once had with its Radio Shack stores.

Michele Preston, an analyst with L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin, said the Tandy 1000, by offering ''PC capability at junior prices'' could be a strong seller for Tandy. She said the company was ''taking steps to fix'' the problems it had had in the personal computer market.