They were neck and neck in 1985 (and it's a bit fuzzy who won overall that year), but by 1986 Commodore definitely no longer held the crown for personal computer platform dominance. IBM-PC clones won out in 1986 by a fair margin and that margin would only grow to the over 90% dominance peak of the 2000's.

But in 1986 IBM itself had only 26% of the MS-DOS unit market share, or roughly 12%-15% of the overall hardware market. Meanwhile Commodore had its still-quite-large C64 market, its new Amiga market, and also its own not-insignificant share of the MS-DOS market (starting in 1987). In 1986 with just the C-64, C-128 and Amiga 1000, they easily had the largest unit market share of any manufacturer (over 30%), twice that of IBM. 64+128+Amiga share in 1987 was 20%, but I have zero info on Commodore's IBM Clone sales figures.

I'm having a really hard time getting *unit* market share info for say, IBM vs. Compaq as a lot of time it's based on $ market share (which favors IBM since they charged much more per unit than Compaq). I can't find much sales info at all for the Commodore clone offerings, so it's really hard to come up with hard figures for later years. I do know that early on Commodore was the largest IBM clone manufacturer in the European market, but did not make much of an impact in the US market.

My best guess is in terms of systems sold, Commodore lost to IBM in 1988. (IBM would not-much-later lose the crown to one of its clone competitors, I believe it was Compaq?)

I found this article from Compute! in December 1986 interesting, it sort of captures the era: https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue79/The_MS-DOS_Invasion.php

Anyone else have any insight on this?

Last edited by AmigaHope on 08-Jul-2018 at 12:52 PM.
Last edited by AmigaHope on 08-Jul-2018 at 12:50 PM.

@AmigaHope

The C64 versus IBM-compatible PCs was never going to end in C='s favour! R&D at C= was pretty much dead by 1985 that's why they had to buy the Amiga! A proprietary system was never goig to win in terms of units sold to an open standard pushed by Compac, HP and IBM (even C= sold PeeCees)!

Last edited by BigD on 09-Jul-2018 at 10:11 AM.

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@BigD

Well, yes, it's obvious what happened in terms of platform market share. That much is well documented. It's just interesting to note that even though the market was dominated by systems running a Microsoft OS, in terms of a single company shipping actual systems Commodore was still the market leader -- at least for a little bit longer. I'm just wondering how long it lasted.

@AmigaHope

Until the early nineties, there were two completely separate computer markets: business users and consumers. Additionally, Commodore used to have a completely different profile in different parts of the world.

The IBM PC and its clones might have ruled in overall numbers by about 1985 - Commodore US didn't even really compete in that market until late 1988, when they introduced the Commodore PCs in the US.

Commodore was still ruling the European (and maybe Australian? dunno) consumer market though, until some 5-7 years later.

Commodore Germany had introduced its own well-regarded line of PCs in 1984 (?), and the German divisions of Commodore and IBM sold roughly equal numbers of boxes for several years, IIRC. I think Commodore Germany had several years were they shipped more PC than IBM Germany...

@AmigaHope

Commodore lost it's leading role when the Apple][ had 80 columns, colour and slots but the PET had not. This began very early but the PETs where cheaper.

The C64 could not compete with the Apples because of his slow floppy, missing expansion slots and 40 column GFX.

The IBM PC was another thing, to expensive to compete with them, so Commodore PCs could compete with those from IBM until the introduction of the PS/2 models.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 08-Jul-2018 at 04:21 PM.

Commodore were mainly in the low end, low margin market with the C64, whilst IBM was high margin putting in R&D from the big profits. IBM was setting the standards and while the MSX threat from Japan never really made much impact on the western 8 bit markets by the time of the 16 bit era the IBM clones were going to win and Commodore being just one of many cloners wasn't going to be much of a threat to the big boys of the business world. Computers needed to be IBM compatible and the consoles were for gaming leaving other systems as niche market options. The Amiga was the niche gaming/video computer and the Commodore 8 bits were ancient technology by the mid/late 80's as the speed of technical change was incredible back then. Software/OS was the determining factor rather than hardware and with proprietary hardware and OS's Commodore was always unlikely to hold on to it's lead in any market, pin-pointing one specific turning point is very hard as there were so many developments in the PC world.

Oops

Last edited by arthoropod on 08-Jul-2018 at 05:03 PM.

@AmigaHope

Man, I guess I did have one device I haven't wiped that account from.

Anyway, thanks for the reference.
Reading that was like having salt rubbed into an old wound. 🤔

@AmigaHope

Quote:

When did Commodore lose its position as HARDWARE market leader?

When those in charge bowed down to their greed and killed innovation and thus the company.

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@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @AmigaHope Commodore lost it's leading role when the Apple][ had 80 columns, colour and slots but the PET had not. This began very early but the PETs where cheaper. The C64 could not compete with the Apples because of his slow floppy, missing expansion slots and 40 column GFX.

...but the Commodore 8-bit line outsold the Apple 8-bit line by about THREE TIMES. This is counting the 16-bit //gs even.

Anyway yeah a lot of the other comments I'm seeing in the thread are about why Commodore failed -- but that's not what I'm asking! I'm trying to figure out where Commodore actually ceased to be the manufacturer of the largest number of personal computers in the world, a title they held from 1982-1987 or so, as best as I can tell. The numbers I'm really missing are from their IBM compatible division, which would have padded their numbers quite a bit in 1988, potentially giving them that year as well.

@AmigaHope

Quote:

AmigaHope wrote: @OneTimer1 Quote: OneTimer1 wrote: @AmigaHope Commodore lost it's leading role when the Apple][ had 80 columns, colour and slots but the PET had not. This began very early but the PETs where cheaper. The C64 could not compete with the Apples because of his slow floppy, missing expansion slots and 40 column GFX. ...but the Commodore 8-bit line outsold the Apple 8-bit line by about THREE TIMES. This is counting the 16-bit //gs even.

Not because they had the 'Hardware leadership' it was only a market leadership.

Quote:

I'm trying to figure out where Commodore actually ceased to be the manufacturer of the largest number of personal computers in the world, a title they held from 1982-1987 or so, as best as I can tell. The numbers I'm really missing are from their IBM compatible division, which would have padded their numbers quite a bit in 1988, potentially giving them that year as well.

Look, Apple sold their computers for 3 times the price so they had a higher benefit to C= selling 3 times the computers.

And that's how it went on, C= mainly sold their computers because they where much cheaper. But suddenly an Amiga with HD monitor and accelerator wasn't much cheaper than a PC with VGA and sound card, buying an Amiga stopped making sense around that time.

And the C= x86 line stopped making sense, when PC makers switched to cheap Asian made motherboards with high integrated Chipsets, fast CPUs and VGA-Cards.

You can check out C= PCs by yourself, it all stopped before the i80486 was introduced:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PC_compatible_systems

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 08-Jul-2018 at 11:59 PM.

@AmigaHope

Commodore lost the game as soon as it started to use Amiga profits to try to compete against PC vendors with catastrophic PC models: they were already old when released, they had no opportunity at all. But Commodore insisted and kept trying…

What's more, the commercial and industrial handling of new Amiga models vs. stocks of old models was simply terrible, launching new models with improved capabilities while the stock of old models was huge => losses. F.ex., A500+ vs. A600

Commodore had a great machine in its hands, but it was a "second option", their first option was always the PC market, but they were uncompetitive. With the appropriate funds and the correct vision on the future and development, maybe the Amiga would be mainstream now, the way Apple is, another proprietary and closed design.

Saluditos,

Ferrán.

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@AmigaHope

I always thought IBM and $M had a hand in getting "people in Commodore" to waste the company for large sums of money. It's only a theory though. The smear campaign of "It's a games machine" "Real computers are in black and white"

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@thread

I'll just point out that Commodore wasn't the only company that bet a lot of money and R&D on PC-compatibility even when they had their own successful line of computers, possibly draining from those lines.

The three main pioneers of the home computer market were Apple, Commodore, and Tandy. Tandy had several lines of mutually incompatible computers that were, however, quite good. The TRS-80 Color Computer series in particular could run a fully multitasking operating system called OS-9. When computers with window interfaces started to come out, Tandy & Microware stuck a windowing interface on OS-9, too -- though it wasn't as nice as the Amiga's. What's more, they even sold 68000-based workstations that ran Unix long before Apple and Commodore started selling Mac and Amiga. Strictly speaking, they ran Microsoft's version of Unix, called Xenix. (Microsoft never really cared who used what OS they produced, as long as they still made money.)

The PC had such an incredible effect on the home market that Tandy, like Commodore, figured they really needed to get into that business. What's more, their various lines were incompatible (TRS-80 Model 16, TRS-80 Color Computer series, etc.) so there was no clear upgrade path. (Sound familiar?) They came out with a number of pretty nice x86 machines and by the end of the 80s had successfully transitioned to the PC-compatible market, abandoning the architecture of their former models. To be honest, I think they were more PC-alike than PC-compatible, inasmuch as I recently saw in a documentary that Compaq were the first to nail PC-compatibility. Whatever the case, Tandy competed for a while, but struggled as hardware became increasingly commodified.

They had some real financial trouble in the 90s (sound familiar?) and are now out of the market (sound familiar?). I'm not sure if they actually went bankrupt but if so I think it took them a little longer.

I don't know much about Atari, but I'll bet they toyed with the PC-compatible market, too. (Edit: Looks like they did!) IBM scared a lot of people. The only home computer maker to stick to its own path and succeed on it was Apple, mainly because they had carved out that niche and really catered to it. (I can remember when Amiga users talked seriously about breaking into the desktop publishing market. Ha, ha!) Even then, Apple almost didn't make it themselves: in the late 90s there was serious talk about their going under. It took the Bondi Blue iMac to resurrect their fortunes.

Last edited by simplex on 10-Jul-2018 at 05:49 AM.
Last edited by simplex on 10-Jul-2018 at 05:47 AM.

_________________
I've decided to follow an awful lot of people I respect and leave AmigaWorld. If for some reason you want to talk to me, it shouldn't take much effort to find me.

@AmigaHope

Quote:

Anyway yeah a lot of the other comments I'm seeing in the thread are about why Commodore failed -- but that's not what I'm asking! I'm trying to figure out where Commodore actually ceased to be the manufacturer of the largest number of personal computers in the world, a title they held from 1982-1987 or so, as best as I can tell. The numbers I'm really missing are from their IBM compatible division, which would have padded their numbers quite a bit in 1988, potentially giving them that year as well.

According to Wikipedia,

"By 1988 PC compatibles were the largest and fastest-growing home and entertainment software markets, displacing former leader Commodore.[47] The company was still selling 1-1.5 million worldwide each year of what Computer Chronicles that year called "the Model T of personal computers".[48] Epyx CEO David Shannon Morse cautioned, however, that "there are no new 64 buyers, or very few. It's a consistent group that's not growing … it's going to shrink as part of our business".[49]"

C64 made Commodore big and their success declined with it.

Original Amiga 1000 had slow start and they had to introduce cutdown model Amiga 500 (1987) to get sales rolling. Still, due to its higher price (and late introduction) it could not compensate falling C64 sales numbers.

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@AmigaHope

"Child" computers like C64 can´t create healthy third party market (software for real work, not mere entertainment). Commodore lost race for serious computing with the introduction of the IBM PC. Then, nobody cared about Commodore´s entry in the business market (CBM II).

@itix

Quote:

Original Amiga 1000 had slow start and they had to introduce cutdown model Amiga 500 (1987) to get sales rolling. Still, due to its higher price (and late introduction) it could not compensate falling C64 sales numbers.

Advertising was the issue NOT the product. Yes, the Atari ST beat it to market in a cheaper form factor. The NES took the USA by storm but the Amiga was a far more interesting product. Work and play combined. America requires to be told what they should buy whereas Europe in particular knew that the A500 was a great product and bought them on mass irrespective of a relatively higher cost compared to the US price and the still shody TV advertising (other than maybe the UK with their great bundles / 'Sunshine on a Rainy Day' with Lemmings advert etc). The Amiga actually gave game producers and creatives their leg up into the commercial computer industry it was such a game changer. In the USA you wouldn't be blamed in thinking the Amiga in the home never existed!! Other than NewTek products in local TV stations / video production it would have been totally forgotten IMHO! I guess some Americans heard rumours of Shadow of the Beast being a marvel compared to the NES Super Mario Bros. but other than that?!

Last edited by BigD on 10-Jul-2018 at 01:50 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 10-Jul-2018 at 01:48 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 10-Jul-2018 at 01:46 PM.

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@simplex

Yes, Tandy is often overlooked. Even minor things that they did, like 16-color CGA graphics, which made Kings Quest actually enjoyable to play. And they had some sort of text-mode pseudo graphics shell for DOS so people who didn't know DOS could start using their computers immediately.

And their big dream, Thor, which was going to be a read-write CD drive for less than $500. $500!

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@BigD

I dont think advertising mattered much. IBM PC was introduced in 1981 and it already had established solid software base. In 1986 Amiga was just newborn and had very few software available. Even if better offerings were introduced later they were not as interesting because businesses can't drop existing hardware/software right away... continuity is the key there.

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@BigD

Quote:

America requires to be told what they should buy...

This would be the same America where, today, market share for the Mac has increased 50% over the last 5 years (8%-12%), making Apple usage here significantly higher than the rest of the world?

If you want to insult Americans, at least have your facts straight.

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