Adam Osborne (6 March 1939 – 18 March 2003) was a British author, software publisher, and computer designer who founded several companies in the United States and elsewhere. He introduced the Osborne 1, the first commercially successful portable computer.
Early life
Osborne was born to British parents in Bangkok, Thailand on 6 March 1939. His father, Arthur Osborne, was a teacher of eastern religion and philosophy From the age of 11, he was educated at a Catholic boarding school in Warwickshire but from 1954 to 1957 was a pupil at the grammar school Leamington College for Boys, where he played chess. At its peak, Osborne Computer Corporation shipped 10,000 units of "Osborne 1" per month. Osborne was one of the first personal computing pioneers to understand fully that there was a wide market of buyers who were not computing hobbyists: the Osborne 1 included word processing and spreadsheet software. Osborne Computer Corporation advertisements compared Adam Osborne's influence on the personal computer market to Henry Ford's influence on transportation. It is said that in 1983, Osborne bragged about two advanced new computers his company was developing. These statements destroyed consumer demand for the Osborne 1, and the resulting inventory glut forced Osborne Computer to file for bankruptcy on 13 September 1983. This phenomenon, a pre-announcement of a new product causing a catastrophic collapse in demand for older ones, became known as the Osborne effect, but according to some new sources, the real reasons for Osborne Computer's bankruptcy were management errors and insufficient cash flow.
Hypergrowth
After Osborne Computer's collapse, Adam Osborne wrote a best-selling memoir of his experience, Hypergrowth: The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation, with John C. Dvorak, which was published in 1984.
Software
In 1984, Osborne founded Paperback Software International Ltd., a company that specialized in inexpensive computer software. Its advertisements featured Osborne himself, arguing that if telephone companies applied the same logic to their pricing as software companies, a telephone would cost $600. One of its products was VP-Planner, an inexpensive clone of Lotus 1-2-3, which led to legal action when Lotus sued Paperback Software in 1987. As a result of the lawsuit, consumer confidence waned for Paperback Software, and its revenues had dropped 80% by 1989, preventing the firm from getting venture capital for expansion. In February 1990, the case went to court and on 28 June, the court ruled that Paperback Software's product, by copying Lotus 1-2-3's look and feel menu interface, violated Lotus's copyright. Osborne stepped down from Paperback Software the same year.
His final venture, in 1992, was to found the company Noetics Software, to work on artificial intelligence. Both former wives and all his children survived him.