Three decades ago, the Timex Corporation made its name by turning wristwatches into commodities, selling inexpensive, reliable timepieces in thousands of drugstores and discount outlets across the country.
Yesterday, industry analysts said the same strategy effectively killed the company’s chances in the home computer market. And the company’s traditional secretiveness, they added, greatly slowed the efforts of outside parties to design computer programs and equipment.
That assessment came a day after Timex announced that, like Texas Instruments and Mattel Inc. before it, it was abandoning its efforts to sell the most inexpensive computers after concluding that it could not sell the machines profitably.
As it bowed out, Timex was estimated to have sold more than one million units of the British-designed Sinclair computer, largely to customers that had never before purchased an electronic device more complicated than a calculator.
Lack of Technical Support Cited
”Buying a computer is not like buying a watch, and they fundamentally did not understand that,” said Kirtland H. Olson, publisher of Syntax, a monthly newsletter for owners of the Timex Sinclair line of computers. ”People need support when they buy a computer. When Timex got that message, they had already taken a serious licking.”
Just two years ago, when Timex brought out the Timex Sinclair 1000, the company looked like it was on the brink of a great success. The computer, while limited in memory power, was the first to sell in the United States for under $100. Moreover, Timex’s broad distribution network, including drugstores, retail discounters and catalogue stores, appeared to give the company a marked lead over less established competitors.
But in the last couple of years, consumers have grown accustomed to buying computer equipment in outlets that can provide them with information as well as additional components and programs.
Yesterday, an official of the privately held company denied that Timex’s failure was due to any strategic errors, but cited the rapid changes in the home computer market in 1983.
C. M. Jacobi, Timex’s vice president for marketing and sales, said yesterday that even in light of the industry’s price war last year, ”I don’t think we would have done much differently.”
He continued: ”Our users were very complimentary of the machine. It is just that the industry built inventory faster than it should have, and then had to liquidate them at very low prices. We did not think things would go as far as they did.”
Harold Kinne, senior vice president of Future Computing Inc., called the Timex machine ”a computer literacy device” that was overtaken by more sophisticated computers made by Atari, Texas Instruments and Commodore.
Users of Timex equipment were more critical. Some said yesterday that they did not believe the machine was a toy – a reputation it got within the industry because Timex failed to release more sophisticated models until late last year, when the Timex Sinclair 1000 was already overtaken by computers offering better games and graphics. But, they added, Timex took little interest in nurturing its users.
Sinclair has said it would market its new $500 computer itself.
Martin Newman, a Manhattan musician who owns two Timex computers, said Timex ”always had a nasty attitude.” He added, ”When you called to ask any technical questions, their attitude was ‘too damn bad.’ ”
Similar problems were encountered by the estimated 400 companies that sell programs and peripheral equipment such as disk drives for Timex computers. Timex ”turned away the help,” Mr. Olson said.
That secretiveness appears rooted in Timex tradition. The company was founded in the 1940’s by T. Frederick Olsen, a Norwegian who owns a majority of the company’s stock and has rarely granted interviews.
In the mid-1960’s, the company held 50 percent of the United States watch market. But it lost market share in the mid-1970’s to foreign makers of digital watches.
Recently Timex has attempted to reverse losses that by some reports totaled more than $100 million last year, a figure that the company said yesterday ”materially misstated” its financial condition.
Mr. Olsen has now reportedly taken a much greater role in day-to-day operations. He discharged a number of executives and decided to take the company into new markets, including health care products.