Five million for the Spectrum

On 7 April 1986, Clive Sinclair handed the marketing, manufacturing and distribution rights to his computers to his great rival, Alan Sugar's Amstrad, for £5 million ^[1]. CRASH summed up the deal as the worldwide rights to make and sell all Sinclair computers, present and future; with it, the magazine wrote, Amstrad would hold 60% of the British home computer market by units ^[2].

For Sinclair Research, it was a way out. It had been through a difficult year with its creditors, among them Thorn EMI, Timex and Barclays, and had got by at Christmas 1985 thanks to a £10 million purchase of Spectrum+ machines by Dixons ^[1]. In August, Clive explained to Sinclair User: "We were losing money in it and there is no sense in doing that." And he added: "If Alan Sugar can make money out of it which he may do, well, fantastic" ^[3].

For £5 million, Amstrad got the Spectrum, and the Spectrum got a tape recorder inside.

Sinclair Research carried on, without the computers. Clive kept the project for a portable, the Pandora, which now needed a new system because it could no longer use Spectrum technology, and the bet on whole-wafer chips (wafer scale), through Anamartic ^[3].

CRASH guessed the casualties straight away: the QL was "effectively dead" and the Microdrives would disappear, replaced by Amstrad's 3-inch floppy disks, simple and reliable. Alan Sugar let slip the ideas he had: entry prices of £139, built-in cassette recorders and disk drives for the Spectrum ^[2].

Almost all of it came true. Amstrad's first Spectrum, the +2, was a 128 in a grey case with a sprung keyboard, two joystick ports and a built-in cassette recorder, the Datacorder; at power-on it showed "© 1986 Amstrad" and it cost £149 ^[4]. Amstrad sold it purely as a games machine, let shops put together game bundles and tightened quality control, which made it far more reliable than Sinclair's Spectrums. It's said that the 5 million of the deal paid for itself within a year ^[5].

Then came the +3, in 1987, with a 3-inch disk drive, at £249 and later £199, and the +2A, in a black case with the +3's board ^[4]. Amstrad ended production of all Spectrums in 1992, ten years after the first ^[4].