Home computers market share from 1975 to 2005 : http://www.wowdailynews.com/pegasus/total_share.html Interesting enough, Commodore 64 had the same fate as MegaDrive/Genesis. C-64 was Commodore best selling product ever with 17 milion unit sold ( it is the best selling single model computer of all time ) but it was the beginning of the end for that company. Tramiel ( Ceo of CBI ) was so focus on competition ( TRS, Atari400/800 ) that begun a price war so harsh that ruined all the savings of Commodore dispite obtaining a lot of market share ( the low price of home computer hurt Atari's console industry and it is one motive of Crash '83 ). When a new worthy opponent arise ( PC IBM clones ) Commodore was too financially weak to resist and went bankrupt in 1994. This is the same destiny occured to Sega in mid '90.

o_O

i would never think that amiga share was so weak ...
5.52 % max (>_

That cant be true .Besides ,this seems only USA data .In Europe first the 8 bit computers and then the Atari St and specially the Commodore Amiga were huge for many years .As home computers way more established that the PC of the era that were very weak for games and graphics .

Commodore and Atari mistake in computers was to wait too much until releasing the subsitutes of the St and the Amiga .Models as the STE and the Amiga 2000 werent too much an improvement and the actual chipset was the same .In 1991 it was clear the PC had reached the graphical power of the Amiga and with its hard drives etc it was turning into a better plattform .When finally Commodore and Atari reacted and launched the Amiga 1200 and the Falcon 030 with their 32 bits CPUs ,real colour palette ,hard drives etc it was too late the PC had become too big and the situation couldnt reverse easily .Plus ,thas was the time of the tecnhology race in the PC realm ....386,486,486DX2,Pentium,PentiumII ...in a few years the PC was light years ahead of were it was before .If Commodore wanted to keep the compute market it should have released the 1200 before and specially stick to the PC philosophy providing upgrades for the CPU and GPU ,hard drive and sound card much faster than with the old model of business .

Finally some valid C64 scores, now I have nearly all data for my 3rd gen analysis

Thanks Celine, very interesting article!

What about Amstrad CPC ? It was very successful in France, Germany and Spain

Louie said: Finally some valid C64 scores, now I have nearly all data for my 3rd gen analysis Thanks Celine, very interesting article!

Then I hope you 'll make me read your analisys

@Diomedes

I think this is for worldwide sales. There is the references for the info at the end of the page.

Amiga and Atari corp ( Tramiel ) was destroyed by the rise of the IBM compatible clones.

Commodore had financial problem caused by R&D cost and harsh price war with TI and Atari.

This is why Commodore fired Tramiel though C-64 was the best selling Home computer ever. 

wow, as said skaa,

I thought, I dont know why .., but I thought Amiga market share was stronger !!
...

The analysis should be segmented between US ,Europe and Japan .

In Japan the PC didnt have any relevance in the 80s and 90s ...computer as the MSX familiy and later the FMTowns ,Marty and Sharp X68000 were the big deal there .

In Europe the 8 bits computers as the Commodore 64 ,Amstrad CPC (Schneider in Germany ) and Sinclair Spectrum were the absolute protagonists of the market since 1982 and until 1989-1990.The MSX had also some presence in some countries as Spain and Holland.The Atari St and Commodore AMiga were introduced in 1984 and were the high end machines although by 1987 they had gained a lot of ground .Specially in the UK the ST and Amiga grew very powerful .

The PC those years had some proffesional presence .I remember going to the school and in the informatic asignature they had PCs to learn us to use them .They were very basic machines with Hercules or CGA graphics cards (Hercules being monochrome and CGA 8 colours ) and without sound ,hard drive or whatever .But nobody had those in your home ,we had a Amstrad CPC ,Spectrum or C64 .Those more lucky had an ST or Amiga .The Amiga and St graphics and sound capabilities were far ahead the PC of the time so it was the right choice for people looking into music or graphic design .Also the operative system was way better ....the Atari ST OS called Atari TOS was the first "windows " system I have seen and the Amiga Workbench was quite good as well .

This chart evidently doesnt take in count the Japan numbers and the European ones ...as the absence of the MSX and the european computers as the Spectrum and Amstrad CPC show .