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The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was huge at that time (according to Wikipedia 5 million units sold (excluding clones)), yet is completely absent from the charts?
by PeterStuer 11y ago
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was huge at that time (according to Wikipedia 5 million units sold (excluding clones)), yet is completely absent from the charts?
- Someone 11y agoI guess those sales numbers are for the USA.
- phillc73 11y agoThe BBC Micro is also not present, but sold more than 1.5 million units, again according to Wikipedia.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro#Market_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro#Market_impact
- renaudg 11y agoAnd the Amstrad CPC had 3 millions units sold. This just goes to show how regional the 8 bit markets were. You, and the guy mentioning the BBC Micro, are obviously talking from a UK perspective. I grew up in France and the Amstrad CPC (a British computer!) was the biggest 8-bit machine here by far. Same goes for Spain, I heard. There were also many Thomson TO7 and MO5 in classrooms due to the government supporting this French manufacturer in the same way the UK gov did for the Beeb. And just a few people I knew had a C64, but felt left out. Never, ever heard of Spectrum or anything else at the time. The 16 bit era was different : the Amiga and Atari ST managed to be extremely popular all across Europe.
- toyg 11y agoI agree. In Italy the C=64 was utterly dominant among consumers, with ZXSpectrum / Amstrad also-rans.
- CmdrKrool 11y agoI recently saw this entertaining video about Amstrad and Alan Sugar in the 80s and 90s (also by Kim Justice, not the first time he's been linked in this thread), which makes the point that to Sugar's credit, Amstrad was the only UK manufacturer to recognize the potential of mainland western Europe and make an effort to market its machines there while the others were fixated on trying (and failing) to 'break' America. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiIXn9Tr5hI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiIXn9Tr5hI