The resulting Osborne 1 featured a 5-inch (130 mm) 52-column cathode-ray tube display, two floppy-disk drives, a Z80 microprocessor, and 64 KB of RAM.

The first Osborne 1 shipped in July 1981, and its low price set market expectations for bundled hardware and software packages for several years to come.

The growth was so rapid that, in one case, an executive who returned from a one-week trade show had to search two buildings to find her relocated staff.

[2] The company announced in October 1982 a temporary bundling of Ashton-Tate's dBase II, increasing demand so much that production reached 500 units a day and severely diminishing quality control.

[3] In 1982, Osborne was originally represented in Australia exclusively by President Computers Pty Ltd headed by Tom Cooper, a captain of industry in the emerging Australian PC era.

[citation needed] Ultimately, dismissing such advice contributed to Osborne Corporation's demise and Chapter 11 filing in September 1983.

IBM's PC was faster, more advanced, and offered a rapidly growing software library, and Osborne's efforts to raise $20 million in capital to rush an IBM-compatible computer to market were unsuccessful.

Unsold inventory piled up and in spite of dramatic price cuts – the Osborne 1 was selling for $1295 in July 1983 and $995 by August – sales did not recover.

A last-ditch effort to create a fully IBM-compatible Osborne produced three prototypes, but too late to save the company from bankruptcy.