PPC in 1996 was not "barely a thing". IBM could win over Apple, and later Sony for the "Cell" CPU on PS/3, and Motorola sold to automobile and other embedded ap

PPC in 1996 was not "barely a thing". IBM could win over Apple, and later Sony for the "Cell" CPU on PS/3, and Motorola sold to automobile and other embedded apps in quantities. It's just that sometime around 2005-2010 or so the investment into new competitive fabs became so astronomically high that it just wasn't good business anymore for CPUs produced in quantities below x86 and ARM.