This month marks the 25th anniversary of the IBM Personal Computer. The PC was announced on August 12, 1981 and became available for sale two months later. Because IBM encouraged other companies to develop compatible PCs, it quickly became the industry standard, according to market researcher Computer Industry Almanac.

The Almanac notes that Compaq introduced the first IBM-compatible PC in January 1983, and more than 100 other companies followed over the next decade. Then, with the introduction of Windows in the early 1990s, Microsoft “wrestled away IBM's leadership of the PC standard.”

PC sales started out slowly, with 5.7 million units shipping worldwide in the first five years, the Almanac adds. But in the latest five year period (ending this month), 855 million units — valued at $1.44 trillion — shipped worldwide. Cumulative totals for the full 25-year history of the PC come to 1.54 billion units worth $3.1 trillion, according to the Almanac.

IBM's “billion dollar baby”

One of the first research reports to cover the nascent PC industry appeared just a few days after the August 12, 1981 announcement. “IBM's Billion Dollar Baby: the Personal Computer,” written by Portia Isaacson and Egil Juliussen, accurately predicted the “profound impact” that the IBM Personal Computer would have, according to Future Computing, who published the report.

Future Computing, founded by Isaacson and Juliussen, claims that is was initially the “only positive voice” for the IBM PC. Other consulting and market research firms looked down on the personal-computer market as just a “hobby thing that might eventually grow up into computer toys for the home.”

“IBM's Billion Dollar Baby” is a fascinating historical read and is available as a PDF download here (10 MB PDF file).

Additional insights on the report and the early days of the PC industry can be found on Future Computing's website, here.

Embedded PCs galore

With the rapid emergence of the IBM PC in the early 80's, numerous embedded-oriented system and board vendors began marketing “embeddable” PCs and “PC compatible” single-board computers (SBCs) to the embedded computing and control industry.

The growing “Embedded PC” momentum ultimately spawned numerous embedded-PC standards — including PICMG's passive backplane PC and PCI formats; the PC/104 Consortium's PC/104, EBX, and EPIC SBC formats; Kontron's ETX and COM Express “computer-on-module” standards; and Via's mini-ITX and nano-ITX, among others.

 
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