When the Amstrad CPC range entered the market, personnal home computer were already available.
The Amstrad CPC range was not the best competitor, yet as the product was complete and ready to use, it managed to conquer good parts of the 8 bit market... And many computers were promptly removed from the market thanks to Amstrad.
Notable Z80-based computers from this era:
- Sinclair (ZX80/81, ZX Spectrum) (UK)
- Enterprise 64/128 (UK)
- Memotech MTX (UK)
- Philips VG 5000 (France)
- Hector 2HR (France)
- Coleco Adam (USA)
- Mattel Aquarius (USA)
- MSX Standard (various producers, yet a Z80 based technology)
- Tatung Einstein (Taiwan / UK)
- NEC PC-88 (Japan)
- Sharp X1 (Japan)
- Sega SC-3000 (Japan)
- Sord M5 (Japan)
- VTech Laser (Hong Kong)
- MicroBee (Australia)
Notable 6502-based computers from this era:
- Commodore (VIC-20, C64, Plus/4) (USA)
- Oric (UK / France)
- Acorn (BBC Micro, Electron) (UK)
- Apple II (USA)
- Atari 8 bit (USA)
Other notable 8-bit computers from this era:
- Thomson computers (MO5, TO7...) (France)
- Exelvision EXL100 (France)
- Matra Alice (France)
- Dragon computers (UK)
- Tandy CoCo (USA)
- Fujitsu Micro 7 (Japan)