Thats is completely. C= went bust, this caused the demise of Amiga.They lost huge amount of money in thier PC sector, this caused C= to go bust. They lost huge amounts of money in the PC sector because of poor management.They should never, in my opinion, even entered the PC market and focussed on Amiga's completely.
I just wanted to clarify something here, the above is completely untrue and unfounded. (Whomever gave you that info was mistaken.)
Commodore Canada (the division of Commodore I have the most knowledge about, I know a little about Commodore USA) sold more PC clones than IBM and Compaq combined, in Canada, during the time that Commodore was in business. Actually, from 1985-1988 they sold more PC clones than every other manufacturer combined and were the #1 selling PC in Canada for 4 years in a row with their CBM lineup. Their numbers in the USA weren't as impressive, but they were certainly more profitable than their Amiga numbers. I recall the Vice President, Duncan Frasier, at Commodore Canada saying to us that their PC sales were more than 3 times their Amiga sales, and I know that their profit margins on their PC sales was more than twice that of the Amiga (maybe more like four times).
The number one selling "Personal Computer" in North America after 1985 was the Amiga 500, followed by the CBM (Commodore Business Machines) PC-10/PC-20 product line. The PC-10 and PC-20 sold more units than all IBM PC lines for 3 years in a row. No other company has sold as many computers of one model than Commodore. They still have that record three times: with the C64, the Amiga 1.3 line (500/1500/2000/2500 are all the same computer, they just have different shapes), and the PC-20.
Commodore Canada was still in the black to the tune of ~$37 million profit in the final quarter when Commodore USA filed for chapter 11. They were mainly in the black because of their PC line (you could ask anyone in management there at the time and they'd tell you point blank that they were doing well with their PC division; way better than with their Amiga division which was entirely dependant on a single Canadian retailer - Computer Answers - for over 75% of their Amiga sales). CA sold something in the region of $20-25 million worth of Amiga's via mail order through magazines like Amazing Computing and Amiga magazine alone.
If you compare Commodore's numbers with Packard Bell, who became the #1 PC clone manufacturer in 1991 and continued to be #1 through 1997 (I worked for Beny Alagem who owned Packard Bell, before selling it to NEC, btw), you'll see that even when Packard Bell was the #1 clone seller in North America they still had a lower final profit than Commodore Canada during PB's volume sales periods in 1990-1994.
Commodore went belly up because of the way they price fixed their Amiga hardware lines, and forced retailers to sell PC clones instead of Amigas through sheer economics (retailers who are in business to make money selling a product, they're not in business to break even selling a product because it's cool or because they love it). There was no incentive for a retailer, or especially that retailers sales staff to direct a computer shopper towards an Amiga. You had to explain how much more the computer could do, how amazing it was compared to a PC, and all that for next to no money. When a customer came in saying "Hi I want to buy a PC, it was easier to just say sure, here's one we have for $2100," instead of having to explain to them for an hour why the $1900 Amiga system was the better choice. You made $500 from the instant PC sale, and $120 from the Amiga sale. A salesman on comission would be crazy to direct a person to a computer they'd make $18 off after an hours work instead of the one they'd make $75 in 15 minutes. You can't blame that salesman for doing that.
Pouring money into development the Amiga, and changing product lines 3/4 of the way through the engineering phase is bad business when you aren't selling enough product because only 10 primary retailers have enough passion for your product to bother selling it. The Commodore PC product line was what kept the Amiga alive from 1986 through 1993, that's where they made the lion's share of their money. You do also have to factor in the consistent selling and buying back of Commodore stock by the top 3 executives in CBM US, that cycle made the stock completely unattractive to large investors so there was no money to be had through public selling of more shares (not that they wanted to do that, if you look at the performance of Commodore stock for the last 4 years it traded, you can see them sell large blocks at $2.50, driving the price down to $1.60 then buy it back at $1.60 and let it grow back. Then, mix and repeat). CBM US executives made a forture doing that, why worry about the regular business and customers when you can make millons manipulating your own stock price because you 3 guys personally own 90% of the publicly trading shares?
All that being said, the engineers at Commodore sure made some incredible computers. Their PC line was at the time the only true "compatible" (you could use any card you wanted in them, while IBM, Radioshack, Compaq, etc all had proprietary slots and cards in one form or another CBM didnt), and their Amiga line was groundbreaking and as powerful with 1993 technology as any PC would be right up to the middle of 1999.
But don't believe for a minute that Commodore didn't make good money selling PCs, Amiga users just went through their days unaware of it because most were so anti-anything-besides-my-Amiga to notice. :-)
