Targeted a very special area: primarily home users who have students or teenage children who are writing term papers and who tend to be naive computer users. Īn analyst stated in early 1984 that the company had
Less than 10% of Adam units had defects, the company claimed, "well below industry standards". By December 1983 the press reported that company executives at a news conference "fielded questions about Coleco's problems with its highly-publicized new Adam home computer, which has been plagued by production delays and complaints of defects", with the company able to fulfill only one third of its Canadian orders for Christmas. Coleco partnered with Honeywell Information Systems to open up repair chain stores around the nation. One store manager stated that five of six sold Adams had been returned, and expected that the sixth would likely be returned after being opened on Christmas. Despite much consumer interest for Adam and a shortage of competing home computers, Coleco shipped only 95,000 units by December, many of which were defective Creative Computing later reported that "the rumored return rate was absolutely alarming".
Penney announced in November that it would not sell the Adam during the Christmas season because of lack of availability. The company did not ship review units to magazines planning to publish reviews before Christmas, stating that all were going to dealers, but admitted that it would not meet the company's goal of shipping 400,000 computers by the end of the year Kmart and J. Greenberg refused to say how many units he expected Coleco to ship by the end of the year. The printer was the main cause of the delays after it failed to function properly at demonstrations, by November InfoWorld reported on "growing skepticism" about its reliability, speed, and noise. CEO Arnold Greenberg promised in late September to ship by "mid-October", but claimed that Adam was "not, primarily, a Christmas item".
Each month of delay could mean losing the opportunity to sell 100,000 units, the magazine reported, adding that missing the Christmas season would result in "inestimable losses". Ahoy! reported that Coleco had not shipped by early October because of various problems. In August it promised to ship a half million Adams by Christmas, but missed shipping dates of 1 September, 15 September, 1 October, and 15 October. In June, Coleco promised to ship the computer by August. The Boston Phoenix, observing that Adam's $600 price was comparable to the lowest price for a letter-quality printer alone, stated "a nice trick if they can do it!" It was a trick the computers were shown behind tinted glass that hid the fact that they were hand-made and had non-working tape drives. the two groups that really fuel computer purchases", and print advertisements in nontechnical publications like Time and People. The company announced an extensive marketing campaign, with television commercials for "boys age 8 to 16 and their fathers . Competitors such as Commodore and Atari almost immediately announced similar computer-printer bundles. The Adam announcement received favorable press coverage. From the time of the computer's introduction to the time of its shipment, the price increased, from US$525 to $725. Coleco announced the Adam at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in June 1983, and executives predicted sales of 500,000 by Christmas 1983.
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