I recently was looking at computer events from 1983, at that time Apple sold it's 1 millionth apple ][ (released in 1977) and Commodore sold it's 1 millionth VIC-20 (this was a year after the c64 so it hadn't overtook the market just yet). So it took apple five years to sell a million of various apple ][s and ][pluses, and only two for Commodore to sell a million VIC-20s.
Later Commodore got the Guiness honor of producing the most of a single model computer with the Commodore 64, no solid number but its above 12 million up to 17 million.
An interesting read is Brian Bagnall's book Commodore: A Company on the Edge, which has many accounts from Commodore's staff. One interesting tidbit, is Apples marketing at the time though they were third in sales (behind Radio Shack and Commodore) their ads touted "We are Number One!" of course there probably wasn't a mention of what they were number one of...
What Apple got for a time was a foothold on the Business market with VisiCalc, and also Apple Works (this is not the Mac GUI program Appleworks). They also got a solid foothold in the education market. Educational software was a very lucrative market for many companies during the 80s and early 90s.
Later Commodore got the Guiness honor of producing the most of a single model computer with the Commodore 64, no solid number but its above 12 million up to 17 million.
An interesting read is Brian Bagnall's book Commodore: A Company on the Edge, which has many accounts from Commodore's staff. One interesting tidbit, is Apples marketing at the time though they were third in sales (behind Radio Shack and Commodore) their ads touted "We are Number One!" of course there probably wasn't a mention of what they were number one of...
What Apple got for a time was a foothold on the Business market with VisiCalc, and also Apple Works (this is not the Mac GUI program Appleworks). They also got a solid foothold in the education market. Educational software was a very lucrative market for many companies during the 80s and early 90s.