Atari ST Computer Sales and Marketshare: A Comparison

[intric8]

I've always been intrigued by the seemingly parallel paths the Atari ST line took alongside the Amiga. The games were always similar; the fanbase migrated from the US to Europe in the late 80s/early 90s; the price points (and even exterior wedge designs) were comparable; and they both ceased (for the most part, give or take) near the same time as well. And Jack Tramiel.

But I'd never had a good feeling for which scene was bigger overall.

So, I performed a bit of research to check out the sales and marketshare. If you've ever been curious, too - thoughts welcome:
https://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=131

Cheers

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Atari ST was more popular in Eu from the start. That table about sales is certainly US only, so not really representative.

No way that Amiga 1000 was sold as good as Atari 520 ST. I remember how poor was Amiga SW choice in 1987.

 

Ataris main problem was slow and small step development. With Amiga was little better. But they lost right when PCs started to develop faster - mostly in Asia considering motherboards and related chips, peripherals, + Intel's aggressive CPU dev. IBM did it's part with VGA. It was so good design that is still in use, almost 30 years later.

[cjameslv]

Good read.

[atarian63]

Atari ST was more popular in Eu from the start. That table about sales is certainly US only, so not really representative.

No way that Amiga 1000 was sold as good as Atari 520 ST. I remember how poor was Amiga SW choice in 1987.

 

Ataris main problem was slow and small step development. With Amiga was little better. But they lost right when PCs started to develop faster - mostly in Asia considering motherboards and related chips, peripherals, + Intel's aggressive CPU dev. IBM did it's part with VGA. It was so good design that is still in use, almost 30 years later.

2-1 in favor of 520 st in the us. early Amiga had software advantage but came out slightly later was MUCH more expensive and early models had issues,Within a year St had the software advantage, which changed again after Atari focused on EU and St's were hard to get,same time A500 cost reduced amiga was released,we had to sell what we could get unfortunately. were were a dealer for both and that was my experience.PCs' killed both slowly,When VGA hardware and sound boards arrived it pulled from both but was still a kludge with custom autoexec.bats and hi memsys configs, we thought they were junk.The public thought otherwise.

Edited October 2, 2016 by atarian63

[intric8]

Good read.

 

Thanks, man. I did one for Commodore sales back in April, too (since I see your sweet avatar pic there), based off of some of the same data sets:

https://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=45

 

@ParanoidLittleMan, my understanding is that the sales figures represent worldwide sales not regional. The numbers are rounded, but relatively accurate from what I've been able to tell in the research I made. If you've got another data set, I'd love to see it, though, to cross-check.

 

 

Cheers

Edited October 4, 2016 by intric8

[cjameslv]

I'll check it out, thanks!

[calimero]

there is like ten threads on eab, atari-forum and here

 

link to same thread on eab: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=84295

 

and point that I made in that thread:

 

---

 

 

 

Here you can read about Jeremy sources about figures: http://jeremyreimer.com/uploads/notes-on-sources.txt - he did not mention from where he pull number of Atari sales!

 

Here is Atari Corp. K-10 Form for 1989. (note that Atari Corp was not obligate to fill K-10 before 1989.!): https://archive.org/details/AtariCor...nualReport1989

as you can read THERE is NO sales figure in units, only in $.

 

Further, in K-10 for 1989. Atari Corp. state:

"Sales of ST and PC products INCREASED by 36%, from $218.1 million in 1987 to $296.5 million in 1988."

 

and according to Jeremy Reimer Atari ST sales:
1987 - 400.000
1988 - 350.000
Jeremy fail to note increase of 36% from 10-K but instead he DECREASE ST sales for 15% !!!

 

This bring shadow over Jeremys numbers regarding ST sales!!!