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Amstrad E-mailer
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Amstrad E-mailer
The Amstrad E-mailer (often stylized as E-m@iler or written as Emailer or Em@iler) is a Personal Communication Centre that is a landline phone device, launched in March 2000.
The idea for the Amstrad E-mailer was conceived by Bob Watkins and was called BSI. The product was designed by Cliff Lawson and Ian Saward who started working on the Emailer in 1997.[citation needed] It was based on the Amstrad PB1500 Landline phone, using the same design and layout.[citation needed]
The first Amstrad E-mailer was a collaboration between Amstrad and BT, with Amstrad using the backend and email server provided by BT.[citation needed] BT released their own e-mail phone, the BT Easicom 1000, in 1998, 2 years before the Emailer's release. When the Amstrad E-mailer was released in March 2000, it had the "Powered by BT" logo printed on it.[citation needed] By 2002 Amstrad hosted their own Email/Internet service and broke all ties with BT.[citation needed]
The bootloader was named "PBL", an abbreviation for "Primary Boot Loader", and was designed by Trevor Kellaway at Application Solutions for Amstrad.
The E-mailer was a desktop telephone with a 4:3 5.8" LCD screen and limited Internet dialup and email messaging capabilities. Later models (the E-m@iler Plus, released 2002, and E3 Superphone with video Phone capabilities, released 2004) included the ability to play ZX Spectrum computer games.
Amstrad made a loss on every E-Mailer sold. Amstrad recouped that loss through the phone calls made each day with a "pay-as-you-use" business model. It was only after they were used for 2 to 3 years that they finally paid their build cost back to Amstrad and started to make a profit. Amstrad eventually broke even, as Lord Sugar said in an interview in 2011:
I think the mistake was that it was slightly too late – we're going back maybe ten years or more. The explosion of the broadband market meant the demise of that product. We sold 450,000 but we subsidised them because I wanted to get into a business where I was no longer on the treadmill of expecting to make a profit on hardware. There was a cost each time a person sent an email and that was where our revenues were coming from. But they are still out there – I think there are 150,000 people still using them and I think someone told me Amstrad now has broken even and we have actually recovered all the costs.
The unpopularity of the E-mailer led to losses at Amstrad's Amserve company. This was partially attributed to the fact that any time a customer checked their emails on the E-mailer, it would cost them 20p a time. In 2001, Watkins resigned after being with Amstrad for over 25 years due to losses from the E-mailer.
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Amstrad E-mailer
The Amstrad E-mailer (often stylized as E-m@iler or written as Emailer or Em@iler) is a Personal Communication Centre that is a landline phone device, launched in March 2000.
The idea for the Amstrad E-mailer was conceived by Bob Watkins and was called BSI. The product was designed by Cliff Lawson and Ian Saward who started working on the Emailer in 1997.[citation needed] It was based on the Amstrad PB1500 Landline phone, using the same design and layout.[citation needed]
The first Amstrad E-mailer was a collaboration between Amstrad and BT, with Amstrad using the backend and email server provided by BT.[citation needed] BT released their own e-mail phone, the BT Easicom 1000, in 1998, 2 years before the Emailer's release. When the Amstrad E-mailer was released in March 2000, it had the "Powered by BT" logo printed on it.[citation needed] By 2002 Amstrad hosted their own Email/Internet service and broke all ties with BT.[citation needed]
The bootloader was named "PBL", an abbreviation for "Primary Boot Loader", and was designed by Trevor Kellaway at Application Solutions for Amstrad.
The E-mailer was a desktop telephone with a 4:3 5.8" LCD screen and limited Internet dialup and email messaging capabilities. Later models (the E-m@iler Plus, released 2002, and E3 Superphone with video Phone capabilities, released 2004) included the ability to play ZX Spectrum computer games.
Amstrad made a loss on every E-Mailer sold. Amstrad recouped that loss through the phone calls made each day with a "pay-as-you-use" business model. It was only after they were used for 2 to 3 years that they finally paid their build cost back to Amstrad and started to make a profit. Amstrad eventually broke even, as Lord Sugar said in an interview in 2011:
I think the mistake was that it was slightly too late – we're going back maybe ten years or more. The explosion of the broadband market meant the demise of that product. We sold 450,000 but we subsidised them because I wanted to get into a business where I was no longer on the treadmill of expecting to make a profit on hardware. There was a cost each time a person sent an email and that was where our revenues were coming from. But they are still out there – I think there are 150,000 people still using them and I think someone told me Amstrad now has broken even and we have actually recovered all the costs.
The unpopularity of the E-mailer led to losses at Amstrad's Amserve company. This was partially attributed to the fact that any time a customer checked their emails on the E-mailer, it would cost them 20p a time. In 2001, Watkins resigned after being with Amstrad for over 25 years due to losses from the E-mailer.
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