The

Amstrad Amstrad was a British electronics company, founded in 1968 by Alan Sugar at the age of 21. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in April 1980. During the late 1980s, 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.

History

Design and release

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. It was based on the Amstrad PB1500 Landline phone, using the same design and layout. The first Amstrad E-mailer was a collaboration between Amstrad and BT, with Amstrad using the backend and email server provided by BT. 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. By 2002 Amstrad hosted their own Email/Internet service and broke all ties with BT. The

bootloader A bootloader, also spelled as boot loader or called boot manager and bootstrap loader, is a computer program that is responsible for booting a computer. When a computer is turned off, its softwareincluding operating systems, application code, an ...

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 A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

with a 4:3 5.8" LCD screen and limited

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

dialup Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telep ...

and

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

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 The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

Computer Games.

Profitability

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 Alan Michael Sugar, Baron Sugar (born 24 March 1947) is a British business magnate, media personality, author, politician and political adviser. In 1968, he started what would later become his largest business venture, consumer electronics com ...

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. In 2001, Watkins resigned after being with Amstrad for over 25 years due to losses from the E-mailer.

Discontinuation

The

E-mailer relied heavily on the Amserve Service to function, without it, it deactivates. All

E-mailer models have now been discontinued. On 30 April 2010 the Amserve E-mailer service was transferred to

BSkyB Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...

, who announced that the Amserve e-mail service would close from 30 June 2011. From this date all support for the E-mailer services ended, although FAQs are available on Amstrad's website but the manuals are no longer available. The E-mailer phone will only function as a conventional phone with no online and e-mail after receiving a configuration change to stop it from deactivating, Once deactivated it stops functioning and can never be reactivated. By 2011 there were still about 150,000 customers still using the Amstrad E-mailer.

Accessories

The Mailboard that slides out from under the handset was similar to the original ZX Spectrum keyboard, so it was similar to playing them on the Spectrum. The E3 Videophone Mailboard was the only one that was different, with rubber keys like the original ZX Spectrum. All 3 models of the Mailboard can be used on all 3 E-mailer models, so they can use an E1 Mailboard on the E3 and vice versa, they work as a PS/2 keyboard. The Amstrad E3 Superphone came with a

gamepad A gamepad is a type of video game controller held in two hands, where the fingers (especially thumbs) are used to provide input. They are typically the main input device for video game consoles. Features Gamepads generally feature a set of ...

similar to a

PlayStation 1 The (abbreviated as PS, commonly known as the PS1/PS one or its codename PSX) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released in Japan on 3 December 1994, in North America on 9 September 1995 ...

controller.

Advertising on The E-mailer

The emailer also included advertising on its screen but when it downloaded the adverts it was on a free 0808 number so the customer was not charged. Advertisers included Sky, AOL, BT, Orange, Toyota, Halifax, Dialaphone, HSBC and NS&I.AOL to become the latest big name to advertise on the Amstrad em@iler superphone
press release, 10 September 2003.

References

External links

Amstrad's E-m@iler product page

Amserve email web interface

Amstrad Emailer Info Site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Amstrad E-Mailer Amstrad Personal digital assistants