🚀 go-pugleaf

Steven D. Borrelli writes
> So far my estimates are as follows:
> Sales (1991) $127 million
> Units shipped in 1991 (estimate)   32,000-56,000.

I calculate that the units was a bit lower ...

$127,000,000 divided by 32,000 machines give approximately $4000 per machine.

$127,000,000 divided by 56,000 machines give approximately $2250 per machine.

Now we all know that a NeXT computer costs more than $4000 except for the  
smallest machine for registered developers. However there were upgrades of  
68030 boards to 68040 boards and NeXTdimension upgrades, both costing less than  
$4000 a pop. (But an ND purchase probably includes a monitor purchase - so  
theprice goes over $5000). It is possible 32,000 'units' was right for 1991 if  
a 'unit' was any item with a processor on it (new computer, 68040 upgrade, ND).

Revenue of $127,000,000 probably includes course fees, support fees, media  
sales, SIMM upgrades, printers, paper trays, and such non-computer stuff.

I would *guess* that NeXT was in the 25-30,000 range based on the above  
arithmetic. Probably the real number was a bit lower.

Remember that SGI is in the 10-15,000 range, IBM in the 20-30,000 range, HP and  
DEC in the 50-75,000 range, and Sun in the 150-200,000 range ... 25,000 for  
NeXT would be respectable in the desktop Unix market. And remember that  
trade-ins replacements and significant upgrades are usually counted by  
manfacturers as units shipped, as are any units that go into a channel without  
making it to an end-user.

Unless you compare to Macs (1,000,000 a year?) or PCs (15,000,000 a year?) :)

Mark R. Thomsen

P.S. Anyone ready to flame me for predicting that NeXT would catch Sun in sales  
in another year? :) :) :)