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The Myth of the Micro; WHAT ARE PEOPLE DOING WITH HOME COMPUTERS?
"WHAT CAN a home computer do? What use is to to me?" Such basic consumer questions cut through the hyperbole and rhetoric that surround the home computer industry.
Like the child who shouted "the emperor has no clothes" in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, they reveal a web of pretence. Surely, everybody knows what a home computer does, don't they?
Not according to some of the leading U.S. makers. Answering these basic questions is the biggest challenge facing home computer manufacturers, according to Mr Don Esteridge, president of IBM Entry Systems Division which produces the IBM "pc." As IBM prepares to enter the consumer market with a U.S.$600 to U.S.$700 home computer called Peanut, the computer giant is still trying to work out what its home computers will be used for, he reveals.
Past experience of computer use offers them little help. "Our market research tells us that two-thirds of the (IBM) pcs sold are used for some kind of business application, and two-thirds are located in the home," says Esteridge. IBM knows what businesses do with computers, and personal computers, "but people don't think like businesses and they don't want to," says Esteridge.
"I like to describe a personal computer as a productivity tool, but when I tell my neighbours that, I get a blank stare. They are quite happy with their typewriter, they have no problem balancing their chequebooks with paper, pen and calculator, and they are quite comforable with shoe-box files.
"We can tell them that computers are fun, that they are creative, that they are an investment in the future." But those answers, Esteridge says, are not enough if the computer "fad" is to endure to become a long-term consumer market.
Home computer users fall into four categories, according to Apple Computer. They are concerned parents who buy computers to give their children a head start in the computer age. They are people with a practical -- often job-related -- purpose such as writing a book.
Others are "anti-obsoletists" who fear being left behind in the rush of new technology, or they are hobbyists who just like playing with computers.
In the U.S., they will buy a total of 5m units valued at US$2bn. This year, according to Future Computing, a Richardson, Texas, market research firm, the researchers predict that by 1988 annual sales will rise to a staggering 15.8m units worth close to US$6bn. The figures specifically exclude computers that serve dual office/home applications.
To live up to those predictions, home computer makers are beginning to recognise that they must discard the pretensions and exaggerations that have surrounded the commercialisation of the home computer.
To extend the use of home computers beyond previously identified consumer groups, manufacturers must find more practical applications for their machines, they are beginning to recognise.
"The industry has been selling the glamour of home computers," says Apple Computer marketing manager Chris Bowman. Advertisements featuring movie stars do not address the real issue of the value of the computer to the consumer, he stresses. "We should be publicising real applications.
"It is hype to tell the world that home computers are 'user friendly.' Saying that 'everyone will soon own a home computer' is not true, and may in fact build up consumer resistance. People do not like to be told what they are going to do.
"If the public's perceptions of home computer applications do not catch up with reality, then the home computer market will falter. The home computer could become the crockpot of the late 1980s -- a hype and bust market."
What will a home computer do for the average consumer? Atari president of computer sales Don Kingsborough offers the blunt answer: "not very much."
"We have got to stop overpromising -- selling computers with the promise that they will change peoples lives."
Software will eventually provide the answers to what a home computer does, but so far the software does not live up to the promises the industry is making, he believes.
"The industry is scrambling to keep up with its publicity," says Dan Ross, vice-president of Timex Computer Corporation which sells Sinclair-designed home computers in the U.S. "The central issue is that the consumer is confused." He compares the home computers offered today to the first consumer-priced automobile, the Ford Model T.
"The Model T sold because it met a basic need that was evident to the consumer. Can we say the same of the home computer?" he asks. "There is a lack of clarity in this industry, we have not clearly answered a consumer need. We use high technology jargon and we continually discount prices." The net effect is frustration for the consumer, says Mr Ross.
So far, the industry appears to have identified the issues, but not to have come up with satisfactory answers. Some lay the problem of finding real applications for the home computer on the shoulders of software producers. Others believe that if home computers are cheap enough the consumer will work out what to do with them.
"Interest in home computers is self generating," says Myrddin Jones, vice president of marketing for Commodore Business Machines, which has led the decline in home computer prices to become the leading home computer manufacturer in the U.S.
He suggests that the industry should be concerned with making home computers easier to use, offering greater support and training to retailers and consumers, making the machines interactive with other home electronics products such as video disc players and with improving the "playability" of home computers with better graphics.
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