The Computer Industry Almanac, Incline Village, Nevada, has now put together its listings of computer populations across the world at end-1993, and not too surprisingly, it reckons that US is the clear leader and has six times as many computers as Japan and seven times as many computers as Germany. Even compared with all of Europe, the US has nearly twice as many computers in use. All told, 18 countries have over 1m computers in use and three more – Denmark, Finland and Switzerland – may go through the million mark this year, the firm says.
Countries Computers Countries Computers USA 74.2m S Korea 1.7m Japan 12.2m Mexico 1.6m Germany 10.4m Taiwan 1.6m UK 9.4m Sweden 1.3m France 7.4m Belgium 1.2m Canada 5.2m Russia 1.2m Italy 4.4m China 1.2m Australia 3.4m Brazil 1.1m Spain 3.1m Europe 37.5m Netherlands 2.1m Worldwide 173.0m
The US also leads in computers per capita with 288 computers per 1,000 people. Australia, Canada and Norway are next with 193, 188 and 173 computers per 1,000 people. Japan has 98 and Germany 128 computers per 1,000 people – and the worldwide average is 31 computers per 1,000 people, it reckons. The Computer Industry Almanac compiles rankings and awards for companies, people and products and includes the salary and wealth rankings of top computer people for those fascinated by other people’s money, and average salaries of computer occupations. A technology forecast focusing on the late 1990s reviews the expected advances and product capabilities – but you know that that kind of crystal-gazing is a mug’s game in the computer business as one eminent research house learned when it forecast in 1981 that personal computers might be an $800m market for IBM by 1985 – in fact they were a $5,000m business. The Computer Industry Almanac is also available on CD-ROM and on Apple Computer Inc’s eWorld. It costs $45 to $60 from September.
