5 years ago... Siemens clings onto Tesco with Trekkie treats

27.11.98 Tesco is to boldly go where no supermarket has gone before by selling Siemens PCs with a 'Star Trek' theme at selected UK stores from the end of November.

Each PC will be bundled with Star Trek software and a poster, to tie in with the release of a new film based on the popular TV series.

The PCs, which will sell for £779, will include an Intel Celeron 300MHz processor, a 3.2GB hard disk and a modem.

But Input analyst Jamie Snowdon is sceptical. He said Tesco faces a tough fight for high-street market share with the likes of Dixons.

"They just haven't got the same expertise and infrastructure," he said.

He speculated that Tesco will offer limited choice and will not have enough trained sales assistants to cope with customer inquiries.

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27.11.03 The idea of supermarkets selling PCs no longer seems novel. It wasn't even that long after the above announcement that Toys R Us - albeit a company that knows a thing or two about games consoles - started selling Fujitsu-Siemens PCs in the UK.

However, this was a sign of an industry reaching a certain stage of maturity. The logical extension was major companies, including the giant Wal-Mart in the US, selling close to the ultimate in stripped-down hardware - a Linux-based box.

The PC - once so complex and costly - had truly been commoditised. So what if we had to go somewhere else for advice and support? A basic PC for word processing and web surfing could be picked up at the end of aisle four and it was a foolish specialist who would try to Klingon to the low-end of the market.