After Acorn Computer released the BBC Micro, executives believed that the company needed a less-expensive computer for the mass market. In May 1982, when asked about the recently announced Sinclair ZX Spectrum's potential to hurt sales of the BBC Micro, priced at £125 for the 16K model compared to around twice that price for the 16K BBC Model A, Acorn co-founder Hermann Hauser responded that in the third quarter of that year Acorn would release a new £120-150 computer which "will probably be called the Electron", a form of "miniaturised BBC Micro", having 32 KB of RAM and 32 KB of ROM, with "higher resolution graphics than those offered by the Spectrum".