Why Atari ST was less popular in USA than in some Eu. countries

[Petari]

 Yes, this is frequently asked question.
My opinion is that there were really multiple factors involved.
History of Atari company - of course, known for game consoles - home and public ones, games, then 8-bit home computers, which were more oriented for game playing than some serious usage - very simple Basic for instance. Additionally, Jack Tramiel was founder and long time main man in Commodore, what was also mostly game computer manufacturer (C64 in first part, most sold). Some may not liking that was from Canada.

1985 - there were already GUI computers on Market - Apple Mac was pretty popular, despite high price. Windows first versions appeared too. And there was DRI . Then, there was big financial help for those students which bought Apple computer.
 It was certainly good idea to go on 16-bit, GUI machine. And by me good idea was to make it universal, so good for all types of SW . With interfaces for then actual, oncoming peripherals. Mass storage too.
 And here comes one of biggest flaws, by me :  no universal expansion port . That was present on most of 8-biters. It came first with Mega ST , then with TT, Mega ST, Falcon - and all of it was different.

 OS:  done by DRI, actually kind of GEM for PC GUI port, then part dealing with disk/file operations - for floppies, hard disks, so FAT12, FAT16 . It was made DOS compatible, including Intel byte order (low, high) . But compatibility was not complete - in case of floppies it was format what was not compatible, later versions little better - well, by me not real flaw, as there were diverse format programs for floppies available for free too - myself wrote such too.  But such details certainly distracted some potential buyers.
 Hard disk support - complex story. It evolved in later TOS versions, but not as much as could. My opinion is that main culprit was DRI C compiler for 68000 CPU . Compatibility with then already wide used DOS partitions was just partial, and worse than in case of floppies. After 1991 that should be better.
 
 Price factor:  indeed Atari ST had very good power/price ratio, what was part of adverts too ... I think that that was more motivating for European buyers. And USD was then with pretty high exchange ratio too .