Your First Computer Is Somewhere on This Chart (1981–2026)

Commodore outsold everyone. IBM invented the standard — then lost it to the clones, and sold the remains to Lenovo. 45 years of PC shipments as one continuous race, and only six names are left standing. Chapters: 0:00 The Wild West (1981-1986) 1:50 The Clone Uprising (1986-1993) 3:05 The Volume War (1993-2002) 5:16 The Great Consolidation (2002-2010) 7:52 The False Summit (2010-2014) 8:46 The Survivors' War (2014-2026) Data & method: • Annual units shipped per vendor, shown as a continuously interpolated race. • 1981–1990: estimates built from Jeremy Reimer's home-computer sales dataset (Ars Technica) plus contemporary Dataquest/press figures — labeled estimates, and the narration avoids specific unit claims in this era. • 1991–2026: vendor shipments from Gartner/Dataquest and IDC quarterly data, cross-checked against company filings. • Mergers are shown as on-board absorptions (Compaq→HP 2002, IBM PC→Lenovo 2005, Gateway & Packard Bell→Acer, NEC/Fujitsu→Lenovo JVs); brands exit at their real end dates (Sony/VAIO 2014, Toshiba 2018). • Charts are generated in code from a structured dataset; every narration claim is audited against what the chart shows on screen before it's spoken. 📋 Full source list: https://gist.github.com/alexguo111/b3... #techhistory #pc #dataviz