The IBM (I've Been Mulling) PC

Hello, Following are responses to various comments on the original message... ********************************* William Donzelli wrote: Keep in mind that IBM made a good bundle of money supporting the PC line. And the PS/2 line. Good point. VERY good as a matter of fact. IBM was about the business, all of the business. For IBM, much of the business was in the support. ********************************* Chuck Guzis wrote: Actually, it wasn't the IBM PC, XT, AT or PS/2 that established the market, but rather the proliferation of cheap far east clones. A Taiwanese "XT" couldn't be touched as far as bang for the buck. That depends upon what one means by "establish the market" in this case. As *I* would define it, a hardware market is defined when many software companies write software for that hardware platform. It only took IBM to "establish" the market by this definition. Business people, that is, people with money, were buying into IBM PCs from the beginning. They had been frightened by the instability of various "business machines" at that time. (Note the Sphere, for example) They did not want "orphan" machines, and were confident that IBM would not leave them in the lurch. And, with the increasing amount of high-quality software for the platform, its success was guaranteed. The clones were INDICATIVE, rather than DETERMINATIVE, when it comes to establishing the market. Only successes get cloned. And, incidentally, the first clones weren't very good. ********************************* Ethan Dicks wrote: I would agree with that. When it was only the IBM 5150 and 5160 on the market, they had a presence and commanded a certain amount of attention in the trade press, but the sales numbers were low. It was a while (years, ISTR) before the dollar amount of 5150s sold exceeded the dollar amount of C-64s sold, and it took a bit longer before the total number of PC clones sold exceeded the total number of C-64s sold. "A certain amount of attention in the trade press?" They were covered like Obama -- with gushing, uncritical admiration, with very few exceptions. These "unit dollars" are artificial and irrelevant numbers, I claim. I am reminded of the Consumer Reports article on picking the best computer for business. They chose the C-64, because it was the cheapest way to get 64 K in a computer. K of RAM/$ was the ONLY test of computer quality. Your comment treats $ of units sold with equal undue importance. First, most C-64 computers were sold as game machines, which means that most software development was in that arena. Nothing wrong with that, but, when most people bought a C-64, most of their spending was done. Games were cheap -- many were free. Their accessories were cheaper than PC gear, by far. But for serious computer usage, the closest competitor for the IBM PC was the CP/M world. And, by the time the IBM PC had been out for a while, CP/M was "last generation" and people were actively scouting for its replacement as "THE standard" computer. Clearly, this was the IBM PC, and, after a couple of years for development, the clones. Try including the dollar value of the SOFTWARE for the respective machines, and see where the total market figures take you... and don't forget the add-on boards and etc. for the markets. Both of these figures will skew radically in favor of the IBM PC. As a data point, a real IBM 5170 PC-AT was $5,000-$6,000, loaded (color graphics, printer, and hard drive). Clones were easily 2/3rds that and sold in great numbers. Yeah, sure, by the time the AT came out, the clone manufacturers had the process down. Earlier, not so much. For years, IBM said, "Sure, you can get a PC clone... but it doesn't run many IBM PC programs. Is that what you want?" Usually, the answer was "no." Later, when the clones were reliably "PC-Compatible" they took more market share -- at which point IBM dropped their prices. This is essentially the same strategy IBM used in the 1960s to keep the "7 sisters" at bay with "plug compatible" hard drives. Warren