NUMBER GAMES - HOW MANY PCs ARE THERE?
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We often get the question "how many PCs are out there?" Like most questions,
this depends on further analysis of how you define PC, and how you define
"out there." IBM compatible personal computers all use one of the CPU chip
models developed by Intel Corp. A few use clone chips developed by AMD. We
have some sales figures on those chips. Note that there is a small market for
these chips as controllers in various devices, but the bulk of them go to
personal computer manufacture.

The accompanying table listing microprocessor sales would make it appear that
there were nearly 21 million XT class machines manufactured, some 37 million
AT class machines, 50 million 80386 machines, and some 9 million 80486
machines for a total of 117 million personal computers. Since NEC also made a
few NECV20 and NECV30 chips, and IBM made its own chips under an agreement
with Intel, 120 million PCs manufactured would be a very conservative
estimate.

How many are still in operation? If we assume that ALL XT and AT class
machines have gone to the closet, we still have some 62 million '386 and '486
machines working. If we assume half of the AT machines are still in use, and
no XT's, (again, a pretty conservative assumption) that would bring us to
80.5 million units.

We estimate that on average, 28% of these computers are modem equipped. This
would indicate a PC with modem population of some 22.5 million. But if we
work our estimates of how many people are on bulletin boards from the other
end, we arrive at about 12.2 million active on bulletin boards. This leads us
to the question, what do the other 10.3 million modems do?

And another question: where did the 40 million older machines no longer in
use go? If the average PC case was 7 inches tall, and you stacked those 40
million PCs on top of each other, the stack would stand 4,419.19 miles high -
hardly something you could miss driving down the freeway. And how about the
monitors? How high would those stack? After some experimentation, we've
determined that you couldn't in all probability stack them more than 3 high
without them falling over - so they would just make a mess - which I suppose
we've done with this article.