Schneider Computers... Stand out from the crowd!

Alan Sugar sometimes claimed that Amstrad's early success was because it didn't try to crack the European or US market, a move which almost bankrupted Acorn.

Eventually though the company had to expand, and the first international market it chose to enter was Germany, which it did in partnership with Schneider Rundfunkwerke AG, a company which much like Amstrad itself had a background in low-cost audio systems. 

Schneider sold re-badged Amstrad machines as its own from around 1984, starting with the CPC 464, but it eventually wanted to sell newer hardware. However, Amstrad wanted to retain control of Schneider's distribution, so the two were set to part ways in the spring of 1988.

It was speculated at the time that Schneider might even sell its machines in to the UK[source: "Amstrad makes plans to build its burgeoning foreign empire", YC, December 1987, p. 10], which inevitably it did with the launch of the Scheider Euro PC later in 1988[source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schneider_Euro_PC]. 

Also launched at the end of 1988 was the company's Tower PC range, shown in the advert, which included the Tower AT, based on Intel's 80286 CPU. 

Schneider went bust in 2002 and was bought by TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings[source: https://web.archive.org/web/20121014202255/http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=58837630].