I think it wasn't the IV version that killed it; After all, there were many dBase compatible programs at the time, e.g. FoxBase which were at least as good and

I think it wasn't the IV version that killed it; After all, there were many dBase compatible programs at the time, e.g. FoxBase which were at least as good and comparably bug free. I suspect it's actually Microsoft Office with Access and a mature Excel that did it. Everyone was using office at the time (for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and the emerging Outlook), so access was "free"; and many things that dBase&co were used for, were actually becoming easier to do in Excel.