The cost/quality thing doesn't mean they couldn't have maintained a "halo product" line that steered the platform. It could have been like the early 1990s PC m

The cost/quality thing doesn't mean they couldn't have maintained a "halo product" line that steered the platform. It could have been like the early 1990s PC market: government with a 'buy domestic' mandate or budget-no-object buyers might have bought a PS/2 Model 80 or Deskpro 386, but the masses, especially overseas, would buy a white-box 386DX made of Taiwanese parts. There's an interesting contrast: while Japan produced MSX-- a clear example that a multi-vendor standard can be wildly successful-- they missed the idea of a clone ecosystem for their heavier-duty professional machines. Why weren't there vendors cranking out clones of the PC-98, FM Towns, or X68000? Did they require more propriatery special sauce than an IBM 5150, or was there a cultural/market difficulty that would have caused them to flop on the market? OTOH, perhaps part of the problem was that the features Japan needed had poor cost/benefit ratios outside of the CJK market: you either have to make the enhanced video stuff optional, reducing platform standardization, or charge people for a feature they don't see as immediately beneficial.