Japan, Germany, France, Netherlands, and the UK were the only countries with the expertise to develop the semiconductors necessary. The Japanese did quite well in microcontrollers and memory chips while the French, Dutch, and British still have semiconductor companies in various segments. The biggest challenge is software, which inevitably will become the dominant force in computing. After a few key standards are established, software tends to develop best in decentralized environments, which disproportionately benefits the US given the size of its educated population. Further, IBM was THE dominant computing company in the 1980s so whomever wanted to supplant Microsoft would have to gain inroads with IBM. Geography alone makes this difficult although SAP might have had a chance had they developed applications beyond supply chain management.
TL;DR, Americans possessed overwhelming early advantages.