Stats/sales of A2s...

[ken.jones@u2u.lonestar.org (Ken Jones)]

To All.  Lest we forget...the following is material submitted by RFH
to me and eventually to the Dallas Morning News to repute the
inaccuracies in a column published earlier stating that the IBM
Personal Computer (of 1985) was the first computer for the "masses."
They did publish my response, and luckily, my estimated figures were
correct.

[BOQ]

   From: Robert Hardman
     To: Ken Jones

     Looking at this Apple II History file, I find that Apple II
yearly sales started out in 1977 at 2500 units, and tripled in 1978 to
8000.  Some harder numbers follow:

          During Apple's third fiscal year, which ended on September
     30, 1979, sales of the Apple II increased to 35,100, more than
     quadruple those of the previous year...  In 1980 Apple II sales
     doubled to more than 78,000.
     -- _Fire In The Valley_, quoted in _A+_, Jan 1985, pp. 46, 51.

          Apple's sales alone went from $770,000 in 1977, the year
     the Apple II came out, to $7.9 million in 1978 to $49 million in
     1979.
     -- Frank Rose, _West Of Eden_ p. 47

          The formal company's first product, shipped in 1977, was a
     redesigned prototype in a light, attractive plastic case, dubbed
     the Apple II.  The company went public in December 1980.  The
     annual report, only Apple's second as a public company, charted
     its extraordinary performance since then.  Apple already boasted
     the largest installed base of any computer company in the world.
     Net income: up 56 percent to $61.3 million in the year ended
     September 24, 1982.  Sales: up 74 percent to $583.1 million.
     -- John Sculley, _Odyssey_ p. 59

          There was one bright spot during 1983.  The much maligned
     Apple II division introduced the Apple IIe and sold more than
     700,000 units, about 400,000 more than during the previous year.
     -- Lee Butcher, _Accidental Millionaire_ p. 181

          The ground rules of the marketplace were swiftly changing
     as the computer industry shuffled behind the IBM PC.  Until 1983,
     businessmen universally used the VisiCalc spreadsheet program
     which was largely responsible for putting the Apple II on many
     business desks.  But the debut of a new faster and more powerful
     spreadsheet program called Lotus 1-2-3 and the introduction in
     the summer of 1983 of the more powerful lBM XT forever altered
     the business market in IBM's favor.  Their acceptance by business
     allowed them to capture nearly 28 percent of the market, compared
     with Apple's 24 percent.
     -- _Odyssey_ p. 147

          ...the venerable Apple II turned in a record performance in
     1984.  With Jobs hounding the division's managers, and even
     refusing to allow the Apple II to be advertised as a business
     computer so it wouldn't compete with his Macintosh, the division
     sold 800,000 Apple IIe's and portable Apple IIc's.  It generated
     revenues of nearly one billion dollars, which accounted for at
     least two-thirds of the company's products.
     -- _Accidental Millionaire_ p. 189-90]

     (NB: _Popular Computing_, Feb. 1985, says that the Apple II was
(again? still?) the leading PC in total unit sales at that time (turn
of '84/'85).)  And finally:

          The [IBM] PC was a big success and rapidly became the
     top-selling microcomputer.  But it wasn't a significantly better
     VisiCalc machine than was the Apple II....  VisiCalc and
     Multiplan looked exactly the same on the screen of an Apple II or
     an IBM PC, and neither program was significantly faster on the
     IBM platform either.
     -- "Robert X. Cringely", _Accidental Empires_ p. 138

--- Maximus 2.00
 * Origin: MoDem Corner - NJ - Home of TAPEDOOR - 609-877-0836
(1:266/28)

[EOQ]
     ____
         KayJay in Dallas____________