At first glance, the liquidation of Commodore appeared to happen out of nowhere. In some ways, 1993 appeared to be the most successful for the Amiga and Commodore in a long while. They had released a new range of machines, based on new chips and a new operating system. The A1200 had sold in the region of 250 000 units by early 1994, and their CD32 surpassed all competition (in particular Sega's Mega-CD and Philip's CD-i) in terms of features, price and sales.
All was not well, however. According to David Pleasance (joint UK managing director of the time), Commodore were experiencing cash flow problems. One reason for this may have been the money required to invest in research for the new machines. Although Amigas were selling well in the UK, there was a lot of excess stock in Europe. Prices were cut, therefore, in the Summer of 1993 to liquidise this stock and improve their cash flow, and although this was good for the buyers, it meant severly reducing their profit margins.
Also, the exchange rates were such at this time that the profits of high UK sales were effectively reduced for the parent company, based in the US.
The actual turnover/profit figures for Commodore were:
<B>Year<TR>Turnover<TR>Profit (figures in millions of dollars)</B>
1988<TR>871.1<TR>55.8<TR>(The A500, the best selling Amiga, was released
1989<TR>939.7<TR>51.3<TR>1987.)
1990<TR>887.3<TR>1.5<TR2>(New operating system.)
1991<TR>1047.2<TR>57.6
1992<TR>911.0<TR>27.6<TR>(A completely new range of machines this year.)
1993<TR>590.5<TR>(356.5)
These figures show how profits began to fall in 1992, and became a huge loss in 1993, resulting in their liquidation in early 1994.
