I knew a lot of people in the southeastern USA with Amiga's. I knew many CBM/Amiga user groups (NASAU aka Amiga.org was one). I did not know a single person with an Atari ST...I only met one person with an Atari 8 bitter...everyone else had C64's and Tandy CoCo's.
I think the perception about Amiga being bigger overseas comes from the longevity overseas, but I think that has to do with the USA being so spread out. There are 60 Million or so people in the UK. In the USA there are 280 Million or so. The difference comes in population density. The entirety of the UK is about the size of Alabama (and maybe half of Mississippi - The United Kingdowm would be our 12th largest state in size). There were many Amiga users within a reasonable drive to London. The Amiga stores were able to maintain a large enough customer base to keep their doors open. In America, it is so spread out that the dealers closed down faster even though there were more users initially. Whereas there are 60 Million people in the UK, the Alabama and Mississippi combined population is under 7 Million.
Germany is a similar situation. 83 million people in what would be the fifth largest state in area.
Look at Texas. It is our second largest state in both population and size. Population is 21 Million, but they are spread over a land mass that is larger than the UK, Germany, and Ireland combined. Those three countries combine for 153 Million people.
Even The most populous state in America - California, has a land mass about 50,000 sq/km larger than Germany, but less than half the population.
Amiga had a longer life in more densely populated areas of the US (New England), but as rural America moved to PC (which already had a hold on business) and Mac, so did the larger cities.
Atari did not do nearly as well in the USA as it did in Europe.
Here is a clip from an article about Atari:
The Tramiels have accomplished much in the four years since they wrested Atari from Warner Communications, but there's still room for further successes and improvements. Company officials routinely concur that ST sales in the U.S. must improve. The ST sells phenomenally well in Europe, especially in Germany and the United Kingdom. But domestic sales haven't grown as hoped, and the introduction of the Mega line--replete with a new laser printer and hard disk drive--has not significantly improved matters.
Why has the ST sold so well in Europe, yet not taken off in the United States? Leonard Tramiel offers the following theory: "There are several reasons. One is that the United States has this terrible disease called IBM-itis, and the IBM PC had gotten a pretty good stranglehold on business here. Plus, Apple had never gotten its stranglehold on Europe. What you wound up with in Europe was the PC, Mac, and ST all arriving at just about the same time. People had a fair, uniform comparison, 'Which of these machines do you want?' and they looked at the price and performance and people bought STs. In the U.S., we had to fight an I-don't-know-how-many-hundred-million-dollar propaganda campaign from Apple, and we didn't have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on propaganda. Finally, the phrase, 'No one was ever fired for buying an IBM' I don't believe has ever been translated into German."
