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According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_Systems_Technology the Victor 9000 aka Sirius 1 was "the most popular 16-bit business computer in Europe, especially in Britain and Germany," though its lack of IBM compatibility meant it couldn't survive in an IBM world, and it died after the PC followed it across the Atlantic.

How many units of this machine were sold in total worldwide? I haven't been able to find any actual numbers, even plausible estimates.

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    Whether it was the most popular 16-bit machine of the era in the UK I can't really say, but this claim should definitely be weighed against the absolutely massive popularity of the Amstrad PCW range of 8-bit CP/M machines, that you could find just about everywhere in the UK right up to the end of the 80s. I think it's quite likely that the 16-bit revolution happened a bit later here than in the US, and definitely after the demise of Sirius (and probably roughly coinciding when ACT, renamed as Apricot, started producing their own designs).
    – Jules
    Commented Jan 8, 2018 at 5:40
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    Having leafed through some of the Internet Archive's copies of PCW lately, the Sirius does get mentioned a lot. Usually alongside the IBM PC. I saw no references to sales volumes though.
    – Tommy
    Commented Jan 8, 2018 at 11:49
  • i heard about the Apricot back in the day. For such a "popular" machine, never found a Victor either new or old.
    – Rui F Ribeiro
    Commented Jan 8, 2018 at 20:37
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    This oldcomputers page quotes 2,000 units/month by the end of 1982 (also repeated on the "History" page on the Act Sirius 1 User Group site. I remember them being "big" in the UK shortly before the IBM PC. When my university went with PCs, they chose their later, compatible unit: Victor VPCII
    – TripeHound
    Commented Jan 15, 2018 at 15:32

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My recollection from that era (and a view from Australia, where I recall several thousand units were sold in Australia, as "Sirius 1") was the overall number worldwide was only in some hundreds of thousands. The period it was on sale was quite limited, from early 1982 until late 1983.

As reported in InfoWorld May 1984, Victor Technologies was reorganising for bankruptcy protection and the article notes that at the time they were "Banking on Victor's survival, or at least on the continued loyalty of Victor 9000 owners (estimated by Victor to number between 100,000 and 150,000)..." [1].

In PC Mag Dec 1983 [2] there is an estimate that IBM sold 188,000 PC in 1982 and 418,000 sold in 1983. As the dominant player in the market and Victor flagged as number 2 (in Europe at least) then it's numbers would be lower.

In "Business Computer Systems, Volume 4, Part 1", written in 1985, on page 31 it notes "To date, Victor 9000 sales in Europe, where the company goes by the name of Sirius exceed 100,000 units)"

Based on these references I believe we could safely bracket the sales at less than 200,000 units, and likely closer to 150,000.

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    Nice research. Thanks. Just the PC Mags numbers seam to only cover the US. At that time the PC was still laughed at in Europe. In the1982-1986 time frame Siemens sold more units of their incompatible PC-X/D series than IBM did - mostly in large numbers to institutional users. Also, During the mid to late 1980s, even Atari outsold the PC as the ST was received as professional system over here. I can not provide better numbers, but I'd take above US centric sources with a grain of salt and may put the Sirius at a higher level.
    – Raffzahn
    Commented Mar 3, 2018 at 8:41

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