Redundancies at Commodore and the debacle at Acorn may have left the micro market in a state of near panic, but Sinclair Research has no intention of going the same way.

On the face of it, recent news from Sinclair is bleak. The company has cut back on deliveries of machines to stockists, postponed the US launch of the QL, and lost the distributor Lightning as an outlet for its hardware. But a spokesman was keen to point out that these developments had no long term significance.

Overstocking during the Christmas period is blamed for "a short term rescheduling of supply and production." This rescheduling should only be a matter of fine-tuning over a couple of weeks, and there seems no prospect of Sinclair being lumbered with an Electron-style Spectrum mountain.

The postponement of the US launch of the QL until May 1985 is blamed on the machine having to comply with US domestic appliance regulations, which means that the US version of the QL will have to sport some kind of internal shielding to suppress electrical interference.

Sinclair will be sending Nigel Searle, a long-term trusty of Sir Clive's to head up the US operation, and points to this as evidence that the company is taking the market seriously.

And Lightning? The company is a major distributor, but has never been a front rank Sinclair distributor. Lightning is to stop handling Sinclair hardware in favour of Amstrad, although it will continue to deal in Sinclair software. The company blames erratic supply.