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Total Share: Personal Computer Market Share 1975-2010

Post #: 137
Post type: Blog post
Date: 2012-12-07 11:06:14.000
Author: Jeremy Reimer
Tags: Computers, Market Share

This is a recreation of the original article that was published at: http://jeremyreimer.com/postman/node/329

I have written two articles based on this data at Ars Technica:

Total Share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures - December 2005

From Altair to iPad: 35 years of personal computer market share - August 2012

(The second article also includes smartphone and tablet market share and compares them to the growth of the personal computer)

The first personal computer, the MITS Altair 8080, was released in 1975 and changed the world forever. A handful of geeks (Bill Gates included) saw this humble $395 kit as the beginning of something big... but nobody knew how big!

The Altair sold a few thousand units in 1975. Today, more than 300 million personal computers are sold each year! How did we get here, and which computer platforms were around for the journey? A lot of people who have come into personal computing recently do not know that there were once many different platforms-- a glance at a 1980 issue of Popular Computing revealed over 100 different manufacturers of incompatible brands!

The following graphs reveal some of the story, and show the incredible growth of the industry. They should also spark some memories of platforms gone by.

All figures in 1,000’s of units

Download the data in Excel format

Notes on sources