Success

The IBM PC was immediately successful. BYTE reported a rumor that more than 40,000 were ordered on the day of the announcement; one dealer received 22 $1,000 deposits from customers although he could not promise a delivery date. The company could have sold its entire projected first-year production to employees, and IBM customers that were reluctant to purchase Apples were glad to buy microcomputers from its traditional supplier. By October some referred to the computer simply as the "PC".

Many manufacturers of professional business application software, who had been planning/developing versions for the Apple II, promptly switched their efforts over to the IBM PC when it was announced. Often, these products needed the capacity and speed of a hard-disk. Although IBM did not offer a hard-disk option for almost two years following introduction of its PC, business sales were nonetheless catalyzed by the simultaneous availability of hard-disk subsystems, like those of Tallgrass Technologies which sold in Computerland stores alongside the IBM 5150 at the introduction in 1981.

By COMDEX in November Tecmar developed 20 products including memory expansion and expansion chassis, surprising even IBM. Jerry Pournelle reported after attending the 1982 West Coast Computer Faire that because IBM "encourages amateurs" with "documents that tell all", "an explosion of [third-party] hardware and software" was visible at the convention. PC World counted 753 software packages for the PC after one year—more than four times the number available for the Apple Macintosh one year after its 1984 release—including 422 applications and almost 200 utilities and languages. By that time 30 to 40 companies engaged in what InfoWorld described as "bloodthirsty" competition to sell memory-expansion cards, and PC Magazine renamed its planned "1001 Products to Use with Your IBM PC" special issue after the number of product listings it received exceeded the figure. Tecmar and other companies that benefited from IBM's openness rapidly grew in size and importance, as did PC Magazine; within two years it expanded from 96 bimonthly to 800 monthly pages, including almost 500 pages of advertisements.

Although IBM sold fewer than 100,000 PCs in its first year, by the end of 1982 the company was selling one every minute of the business day. It estimated that 50 to 70% of PCs sold in retail stores went to the home, and the publicity from selling a popular product to consumers caused IBM to, a spokesman said, "enter the world" by familiarizing them with the Colossus of Armonk. Although the PC only provided two to three percent of sales the company found that it had underestimated demand by as much as 800%, and because its prices were based on forecasts of much lower volume—250,000 over five years, which would have made the PC a very successful IBM product—the computer became very profitable.

In August 1983 the Chess IBU, with 4,000 employees, became the Entry Systems Division. The PC surpassed the Apple II as the best-selling personal computer with more than 750,000 sold by the end of the year, while DEC only sold 69,000 microcomputers in the first nine months of the year despite offering three models for different markets. inCider wrote "This may be an Apple magazine, but let's not kid ourselves, IBM has devoured competitors like a cloud of locusts". Retailers also benefited, with 65% of BusinessLand's revenue coming from the PC. Demand still so exceeded supply two years after its debut that, despite IBM shipping 40,000 PCs a month, dealers reportedly received 60% or less of their desired quantity. Pournelle received the PC he paid for in early July 1983 on 1 November, and IBM Boca Raton employees and neighbors had to wait five weeks to buy the computers assembled there.