MSX came along in the UK when the home computing market was well established. We all knew 'network effects' even of we did not know the phrase, hence, if you were in the Sinclair ecosystem and only owned a ZX81 you wanted either a ZX Spectrum (48K) so you could play the same games as your friends or a BBC Micro like what the school had. Similarly, if you owned a Commodore Vic20 then a Commodore 64 was the way to go. Beyond these few brands there were plenty of Ataris (400/800), Ti/994a's, Dragon 32's and so on, none of which had 'network effects'.
The UK home computing market morphed into Amigas, Acorn Risc machines, Ataris and the Amstrad versions of the Sinclair machines, at which time Microsoft were still trying to foist a tarted up version of MSX onto the marketplace, but nobody was buying even if the MSX machines were very nice. They just never managed the 'network effects' that the popular machines had.
History is rhyming with itself as far as Microsoft is concerned, their Windows Phone is entering a crowded marketplace that is settled. People with old Android phones go for new Android phones, people with old Apple phones go for new Apple phones. It is that simple. Regardless of the benefits of Windows Phone it just does not matter. They can tart it up all they like but nobody cares.
MSX came along in the UK when the home computing market was well established. We all knew 'network effects' even of we did not know the phrase, hence, if you were in the Sinclair ecosystem and only owned a ZX81 you wanted either a ZX Spectrum (48K) so you could play the same games as your friends or a BBC Micro like what the school had. Similarly, if you owned a Commodore Vic20 then a Commodore 64 was the way to go. Beyond these few brands there were plenty of Ataris (400/800), Ti/994a's, Dragon 32's and so on, none of which had 'network effects'.
The UK home computing market morphed into Amigas, Acorn Risc machines, Ataris and the Amstrad versions of the Sinclair machines, at which time Microsoft were still trying to foist a tarted up version of MSX onto the marketplace, but nobody was buying even if the MSX machines were very nice. They just never managed the 'network effects' that the popular machines had.
History is rhyming with itself as far as Microsoft is concerned, their Windows Phone is entering a crowded marketplace that is settled. People with old Android phones go for new Android phones, people with old Apple phones go for new Apple phones. It is that simple. Regardless of the benefits of Windows Phone it just does not matter. They can tart it up all they like but nobody cares.