There are worrying signs of a repeat of 1984 in the IBM Personalike market, this time around in 80286-based Personals: Intel Corp is seeing enormous orders for 80286s, but is not seeing the parts it ships coming straight out again in products, which suggests that around mid-year there may well be a glut of AT-alikes, leading to plunging prices and a shut-off of orders for the chips to make them; in 1983, Intel couldn’t keep up with demand for 8088s as anything from 35 to 50 companies said that they were looking for 10% of the IBM Personalike market and the over-optimism led to a long hangover that saw even fairly strong players like Columbia going to the wall, and several of the majors abandoning the business; the day of the $1,000 AT-alike with 20Mb hard disk may well dawn before year-end.
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