I've obviously been a fan of the Amiga for decades even before I cared to admit it while an owner of a Atari STFM 1040 with 1 whole Mb of RAM! However, while I knew Commodore advertising was ineffective and monochrome as shown below...



... I never realised that the A1000 only sold 35,000 units in 1985! That's absolutely shocking! I've read On the Edge: The Rise and Fall of Commodore (1st Edition) but the calamitous sales figures in the first year hadn't really sunk in! Thank goodness for the A500 and Rattigan's shrewd business sense and Commodore Germany and UK subsidiaries selling well or we'd have never seen the AGA machines! I guess it meant the Amiga could never recover in the USA where IBM machines were more dominant and a good start for the Amiga was an imperative Factor in Tramiel releasing the Atari ST (which suckered in my parents amongst others due to the better price point than even the A500 despite the custom chips adding far more value to the A500 ) the Amiga didn't have much to thank C= for in the end.

1) Irving Gould treated Jack Tramiel like rubbish, kicking him out for wanting to employ his sons in high positions. Hence, motivating him to buy Atari and release a competitor that the Amiga did not need.

2) Not advertising the Amiga correctly and annoying the distribution channels by the way they treated computer shops in the C64 days!

Even so 35,000 in 1985! Is that the international figure or worldwide? I've just checked and it seems the A1000 launched in Europe in 1986 so I guess the 35,000 figure is USA only? Here's the SOURCE!

Last edited by BigD on 22-Feb-2015 at 02:56 AM.
Last edited by BigD on 22-Feb-2015 at 02:55 AM.

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
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@BigD

Quote:

I never realised that the A1000 only sold 35,000 units in 1985!

They were hard to get until the end of the year. A friend of mine got one in Nov. 85, and it was the first A1000 I had ever seen.

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"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

It was released mid-year, so it's only really half a year's worth of sales. And, as noted above, it was not available in all countries until at least 1986.

Like all big-box Amigas ever, it was quite overpriced. I and most others waited until the A500 came out. If the A500 instead of the A1000 was what was on offer in 1985 it would have been a huge success.

Last edited by Minuous on 22-Feb-2015 at 06:57 AM.

@BigD

Just yesterday I watch on youtube the Amiga world premiere presentation. If I think how it was so ahead its times. Figuring myself in 1985 the presentation was really impressive demostrating the ability to make things really inthinkable at that time. Really fun when they run the MSDOS emulator! Evidently people was not ready for such big step. They preferred the pc's that were giving the feeling of a mainstream computer.
Yes it was quite expansive I paid my A1000 the equivalent of 4 salaries!!!

Can you think today selling 35K X1000, we would all here esulting!

@BigD

ALso, wasnt it in 1985 they pulled those machines back when they noticed that easter egg containing the message about : "we made it, they screwed it"

I have always been wondering if that have perhaps in reality been extremely bad setback. For first of all there were much less machines at end of 1985 than there could and should have been, and more importantly, possibly some key persons didnt get their machines in 1985 and hence perhaps got some other machine, and therefore we are missing some huge things possibly.

For if you look at Amiga Futures Retrospective articles, it is not uncommon that they saw Amiga 1985 already and jumped to the wagon. But question is if there were more of those who saw the machine but never got one due to shortage in supply.

@Minuous

Quote:

It was released mid-year, so it's only really half a year's worth of sales.

@Bugala

Quote:

ALso, wasnt it in 1985 they pulled those machines back when they noticed that easter egg containing the message about : "we made it, they screwed it"

Both these seem to have played their part. But were 1986 US sales any better? I really can't believe people like Kit Spencer who masterminded the C64 marketing was allowed to take early retirement in the Bahamas while they released rubbish advertising and angered their supply chain with the Amiga!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Thread

Regarding 1986, this probably helped the home market:


Defender of the Crown Wiki



Still can't see what C= did to take on the IBM Compatibles during this time however!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

I'm sure Trevor would be happy with a mere 35,000 sales today of the X5000!

But yeah, commodore had no idea what they had bought or how to properly market it.....i think everyone agrees with that!


Scott

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