Yes, I never saw any Apple in Europe either (specifically UK). On the educational side BBC was king in the UK, so parents who were teachers would prefer the BBC, which had a great version of Elite too and a lot of the text adventures, but not so many action games.

From my memory of getting a Vic 20 then a ZX Spectrum +3 there was a pretty even split of Commodore and Spectrum machines among my friends. There were LOTS of other machines too, Atari, Oric, Amstrad, Tandy (Radio Shack) in the early days.

Although I had a mouse and a drawing program for the Spectrum the computers for creatives in the UK didn't really take off until the Amiga and Atari ST with their awesome sound and graphics packages.