The Decreasing Influence of IBM
After 1987, IBM PC compatibles dominated both the home and business markets of commodity computers, with other notable alternative architectures being used in niche markets, like the Macintosh computers offered by Apple Inc. and used mainly for desktop publishing at the time, the aging 8-bit Commodore 64 which was selling for $150 by this time and became the world's best-selling computer, the 16-bit Commodore Amiga line used for television and video production and the 16-bit Atari ST used by the music industry. However, IBM itself lost the main role in the market for IBM PC compatibles by 1990. A few events in retrospect are important:
- The 1982 introduction of the Compaq Portable, the first 100% IBM PC compatible computer, providing portability unavailable from IBM at the time.
- The availability by 1986 of sub-$1000 PC XT compatibles, including early offerings from Dell Computer, reducing demand for IBM's models. It was possible to buy two of these "generic" systems for less than the cost of one IBM-branded PC AT, and many companies did just that.
- Compaq beating IBM to market during 1986 with Compaq Deskpro 386, the first 80386-based PC.
- IBM's 1987 introduction of the incompatible and proprietary MicroChannel Architecture (MCA) computer bus, for its Personal System/2 (PS/2) line.
- The 1988 introduction by the "Gang of Nine" companies of a rival bus, Extended Industry Standard Architecture, intended to compete with, rather than copy, MCA.
- The duelling Expanded memory and Extended memory standards of the late 1980s, both developed without input from IBM.
As the market evolved, however, despite the failure of MCA, IBM derived a considerable income from license fees from companies who paid for licenses to use IBM patents that were in the PC design—to the extent that IBM's emphasis changed from discouraging PC clones to maximizing its revenue from license sales. Despite popularity of its ThinkPad set of laptop PC's, IBM finally relinquished its role as a PC manufacturer during April 2005, when it sold its consumer PC division to Lenovo for $1.75 billion.
As of October 2007, Hewlett-Packard and Dell have the largest shares of the PC market in North America. They are also successful overseas, with Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba also notable. Worldwide, a huge number of PCs are "white box" systems assembled by a myriad of local systems builders. Despite advances of computer technology, all current IBM PC compatibles remain very much compatible with the original IBM PC computers, although most of the components implement the compatibility in special backward compatibility modes used only during a system boot.
Read more about this topic: IBM PC Compatible
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