At CES 1987 Atari CEO Jack Tramiel unveiled his “Business Is War” philosophy, and how it was shaping the direction of the business he’d taken over in 1983. The founder of Commodore – a holocaust survivor and notoriously uncompromising businessman – had already been responsible for quite the turnaround at his old rival: in 4 short years, he’d taken Atari from a business that was losing over $500 million per year (the equivalent to $1.6 billion today) to profitability.
He’d achieved this by means of ruthless cuts and restructuring in addition to some smart marketing moves, including repackaging their older 8-bit technology, bringing the ST to market and now… Entering the highly competitive world of the IBM compatible PC.
This is the story of how Tramiel turned Atari around and entered the PC market, as well as a look around a very rare Atari PC3 from 1988.
