Total Worldwide Sales?
Does anyone have an accurate source showing total Worldwide sales for the ZX Spectrum (all models, incl. Timex)? I notice the Wikipedia entry for the Commodore 64 states a total value of 17 million units. This had me thinking - I'll bet that any Spectrum sales figures do not include sales of Spectrum clones through the whole of the former USSR. According to Wikipedia, the USSR had a population of 293,047,571 in 1991. Now, if even only a fraction of that population bought a Spectrum clone, is it not feasible that the Spectrum outsold the C64 Worldwide? From what I can gather, the Spectrum was one of (if not the most) popular home computers in the 80s in the former USSR, with sales continuing well into the 90s.
Post edited by bcass on
Comments
I tried finding info on the Apple II and only found info from Apple themselves. I couldn't even find sales info for the Laser 128 or Franklin which weren't even gray market let alone the 200+ other clones that appeared worldwide.
If you find info that counts machines manufactured just remember that is not the same as sales. It doesn't take into account defects, not all of which can be fixed.
So far, the only sales info I've found on the Speccy was how many were produced starting out. They wanted to produce 200,000 the first year and they didn't even come close.
I have seen web sites claiming that 200,000 sold a month but I haven't found anything to back it up *yet* from Sinclair rep comments in magazines.
https://discordapp.com/invite/cZt59EQ
1 million took about 1.5 years. But they were producing 100,000 machines / month for Christmas before defects. I wouldn't expect them to double production (if you listen to some web pages) plus produce Timex machines and produce the QL... so I think some sales claims are a bit high. I would expect final sales to be over 5 to 6 million not counting clones.
The peak years were probably '84-'86 and then I'd expect a steady decline after that.
The Timex 2068 wasn't produced long and Timex's rep had been hammered in the US so I wouldn't expect it to have made a significant impact.
Yeah but that doesn't really take into account the explosion in sales after August 1983, when the Spectrum was reduced overnight from £179.99 to £129.99, it only catches the start of it. From that point the Spectrum really conquered the market in the UK, and its popularity took a different level. Sales were definitely 5 million at least by 1986. As a comparison, Commodore sold a total of 6 million C64s in West Germany.
https://discordapp.com/invite/cZt59EQ
Home computer sales went into high gear in 1983 or so -- you are just catching the beginning of the boom as Spector says.
Timex made Spectrums for Sinclair in Scotland. Timex, not Sinclair, made its 2068s in South Korea. Timex of Portugal made 2068s and 2048s at its factory in Portugal. Sinclair had very little to do with Timex's machines except providing the inspiration and collecting the cheques. I don't know who made the QL but I don't think it was Timex.
The 60000 figure you quote comes from me -- I've been around a long time and a lot of the stuff about Timex on the net comes from what I've said. This figure was mentioned in a magazine some place but before Timex left the market. Another final figure was 150000 published in Time Designs Magazine. I know you have difficulty believing it but the established base of TS1000 active users was huge, and this kind of sales figure shouldn't come as a surprise from upgrading TS1000 users as this was a much anticipated machine.
After the parent company Timex left the business, Timex of Portugal continued to make 2068s and 2048s. Among its sales was a contract to deliver 600000 machines to Poland. Poland had a lot of Timexes around but there were also a lot of Spectrum clones around as well, so Timex was not the only source of computers there. But we can take a conservative guess at the lower bound of sales in Russia using this figure. 600000 machines for a population of 35 million is about 5 million machines for the former Soviet Union with population around 290 million.
You had the 5 million spectrum sales in the UK before Amstrad, very conservative 5 million in the Soviet Union, a conservative million in Poland (many non-timex machines there) adding up to 11 million easily. That's without adding portugal, spain and many other east european countries where the spectrum was #1.
I think it's quite possible the spectrum in its various forms sold 17 million, but then you will also hear numbers like 22 million and 30 million in sales connected with the c64. And I think for the simple reason that the c64 dominated in the US, it would have won the 8-bit sales count worldwide. Not even the soviet union, with its larger population, could have outsold the US in home computers because of its much lower per capita income.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
The QL was financed by British Telecom and ICL.
It was manufactured by Thorn EMI who also manufactured some of the Interface1s and microdrives and produced the repair manuals on this site.
In 1986 Timex, one of Sinclair's biggest creditors, tried to get the rights to the QL in the Amstrad buyout.
cheers
I'm sure that the C64 sold more than that. There's no doubt in my mind that the C64 was the worlds biggest selling micro - it was successful in the US after all, which is by far the biggest market, while the Spectrum in America had the same popularity as soccer.
https://discordapp.com/invite/cZt59EQ
The 17 million total Worldwide sales figure for the C64 comes from Commodores own annual report - see the Wikipedia article I linked to. This report was published after production had stopped for the machine, so it really is the final count.
As for the US being the biggest market, well, is it bigger than the whole of Europe? The C64 outsold everything else in the US, but it certainly didn't have the market to itself in Europe.
Market Share
US sales used to be larger than the rest of the world combined but I don't know how long that lasted.
"The C64 was hugely popular in West Germany and Scandinavia. It wasn't so popular in France or Latin Europe, though it did well in Italy. In Eastern Europe it didn't leave much of an impression. It was a success in Australia, but didn't hit South America with much conviction. It was of course big in the US and Canada."
And the Spectrum?
"The Spectrum was massively popular in the UK, but didn't do so well in Central Europe and Scandinavia. It was the leading machine in Latin Europe with the exception of Italy. It was a huge underground hit on the other side of the Iron Curtain, stretching back to the Soviet Union. Variants were successful throughout South America making it the most popular machine on the continent alongside the MSX. The Spectrum was never even released in North America and left no legacy there, and Australia was another failure."
The Oric:
Massively popular... in What Every Woman Wants :D
https://discordapp.com/invite/cZt59EQ
I was using the soviet union's population figures so that would have included the republics you are talking about. There are still other east european countries that were not part of the ussr and were not counted, as I mentioned.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
I took the 600,000 unit sale to Poland which is known about and assumed the same number of units per population would have been in use in the USSR. My assumption is that the political, economic and social conditions were similar in Poland and the USSR such that people had similar disposable incomes, similar desire to own home computers and similar opportunity to have one. The USSR did not get official Timex or Sinclair machines (or any other) but did grow an industry of hundreds of spectrum clones so I do believe Soviets would have had plenty opportunity to own a home computer if they wanted and could afford one.
The 600,000 units to Poland was not enough -- spectrum clones were also present there in large numbers. If anything this 600,000 unit figure extrapolated to 5 million for the USSR I believe is a very light figure when you keep in mind that 600,000 was not enough for Poland and the spectrum was a commercial enterprise in a market of 290 million for 15 years where alternatives at the budget end did not exist in significant numbers. The reason why the spectrum was so cloned was because it could be easily, was affordable, and had plenty of software.
Ebay is not representative of the worldwide marketplace. It is dominated by English speaking countries in the western world. But if you pop over to the main Russian web forum at http://zx.pk.ru/ you'll see that there are 1300 active users compared to this mainly Brit forum of 380 active users. This figure suggests that maybe there were more spectrums in use in the east than in the west. It's a weak statistic since the sample is so small, there are other means for spectrum owners to hang out, and the spectrum was a viable machine much later in the east, but it's still suggestive.
They themselves couldn't tell you how many spectrums were sold but they might be able to tell you how many of their friends had computers and what they were.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
The problem with that is proximity to Western Europe could affect Polish numbers in a way that wouldn't be consistant as you travel east.
.
Besides, I dated a girl from Russia that I worked with in the late 80s and it sure didn't sound like conditions in Russia were that great for members of her family that were still there.
<edit> Actually, that was the early 90s. My memory is failing in my middle age.
I'm not claiming otherwise, but without conducting a census you'll never find hard results :-)
If your claim is the ussr didn't have spectrums you are certainly wrong there. Models continued to sell into 2000. We know the spectrum was large there because we have a lot of russians saying so, and today they have an active scene many times larger than what we have here.
If your claim is that Soviets owned fewer computers per capita than Poland, I don't believe that either. The Soviets had a larger per capita income than Poland and also had a more technically-literate population than existed in the west so I think the desire to own one would have been equal to what existed in either Poland or the west.
You can argue about availability. Poland did import their computers but no other eastern block country did. The situation in the ussr was several thousand small home producers who sold mainly home-made clones and software in local markets. There were only a few "large" manufacturers that settled on two spectrum standards: the pentagon and scorpion. From what I understand from our eastern neighbours, finding a spectrum if you wanted one wasn't a problem.
So yes all circumstantial and anecdotal but I don't think unreasonable.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
Apparently the Guinness Book of World Records lists c64 sales at 30 million. It might be interesting to try to source a copy at a library and see what they base that figure on.
The 17 million figure also agrees with the link JamesD provided. I just wonder if that's just one of Commodore's business units. Commodore did have several quasi-independent units in Canada and Germany among other places. I'm hesitant to trust the link JamesD provided as it clearly does not represent worldwide sales, though the author claims it does. For example, apparently no other 8-bit brands other than Commodore, Apple, Atari, etc sold after 1984 according to the author. It sounds like a case of American author not knowing what goes on outside the US, unfortunately :( But otherwise they may be dependable numbers for worldwide sales of the specific brands listed.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
Weren't they both privately held companies? They wouldn't have had to report anything publicly and I don't think they ever did.
Here's a 5 million unit claim for the Spectrum. I found an article or two claiming 2-3 million Amstrad machines. These numbers seem to jibe when considering market share reported for the UK.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
They were initially private but Sinclair were floated by Rothschilds in Jan 1983 and Amstrad floated by a Swiss Bank sometime later. I think the authors of the Penguin paperback 'Sinclair and the Sunrise Technology' took some of the info from company reports.
Here's the latest Amstrad report which puts the final figure for the ZX-Spectrum game playing e-mailer at 493,000.
http://moneyextra.uk-wire.com/cgi-bin/articles/200609280700155448J.html
According to the Daily Mail, Sir Clive and the Rothschilds are still part of a moneyed power-broking elite.
http://tinyurl.com/po4nj
A Sea-Doo scooter beckons...
I noticed no evidence of MSX or the Speccy in his numbers.
The TRS-80 numbers don't appear to include the Color Computer which continued to be their top seller long after those numbers dropped off.
Apple II sales don't appear to include clones which over 200 have been found.
C64 sales appear to be US only which accounts for the world record being almost double.
On Speccy sales estimates...
If Russia was so much better off than Poland and people were that better trained I would expect more of them to buy PC clones like the US market. Don't assume more money equates to more speccy's. The 2068 flopped in the US and they had the most disposible income in the world.
Apple II clone sales were big in Brazil as well and MSX sales took over in later years. Not every machine sold was a speccy.
Per capita incomes across communist Europe were all similar with a few have-not exceptions, but the Soviet's was the largest. Their per capita incomes were still much lower than in the West.
Goods, money and culture could not move freely between East and West. Rubles had no value because they were not convertible on the international market. Cultural exchange was limited to hold control over the population in the East. Goods could not be freely moved because: 1 communist states are supposed to be self-sufficient and are planned that way 2 western companies getting value for delivered goods was a problem as central states had a limited amount of hard currency that was most frequently used to buy grain and industrial equipment 3 export restrictions on technology to the East.
The Russians had few PCs, few apple IIs, few msxs, almost no c64s. What they did have is their own copied versions of the z80, dram chips, ROM chips, etc that were probably used in military technology. The Russian people had little hard currency to buy western computers even if they were available. The state would have had to procure them (as Poland did) and sell them to the population. So instead they built their own computers, the dominant one being the spectrum, selected because it was easy to clone, it was cheap and it had a lot of software.
The political, economic and social situation changed in the late 80s and early 90s with perestroika and glasnost. A few years later the economy collapsed and went into severe contraction. Russians would not have been able to afford western computers (nevermind essentials) even as western goods began to appear in stores. But they could still build them and buy their own stuff.
You cannot compare the situation in the West with the East which is why I used Poland as the template.
Re the 2068, I don't think it's a case of flopping, more like the machine was not given a chance. It was only available for 3-4 months and if you want to use 60,000 units for that period, sales were still very strong. The 150,000 final figure quoted in another magazine probably included liquidation sales of Timex's stock -- when it decided to leave the market it put all its stocks on sale at cost. 1983 was a bloodbath for manufacturers and I think Timex and others looked at that and had second thoughts about computers.
Apple II sales worldwide will be large because of its longevity, its use in business and institutions and because of fewer competitiors in its end of the market, but its sales will still lag the top budget end computers because of the substantial price differential. After 1983 it was home users, not hobbyists and institutions that drove 8-bit sales and a thousand bucks for a machine is a lot to justify for a home user.
Despite having many clones, I don't believe any of them would have been in the same situation as the spectrum clones in east europe -- ie having a near monopoly for a long period and being affordable. The Apple II, being such an expensive machine, would have only had widespread appeal in richer markets.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
This is the article I was thinking of. The claim is 4 million 16k/48k spectrums and another half million 128s at the end of 1987.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
We were discussing a C64 emulator on the Wii and why a Spectrum one was not in the plans.
I said that the Spectrum or Timex Sinclair did not sell in as bigger numbers as the C64, but when I did Aowen said .
Was he right?? Or just looking for to start a mass debate?