[II2II]

>> His divisional heads always had the same answer. Microcomputers—home computing—were a fad. They were low-cost and low-profit. Let others scrabble around in the metaphorical dirt of home computing.

Those views seemed to be relatively common. Just look at those home computer upstarts, many of which were scrambling to make business machines. Apple's follow ups to the Apple II were the Apple III and Lisa, both intended for business. Commodore seemed to have business computers on their plate most of the time. Tandy also pursued the business market. TI was a bit of an outlier in that they were into minicomputers before personal computers, and quickly jumped ship when they turned out to be low profit. Maybe it was different in Europe, but certainly not in North America.

I'm not entirely sure they were wrong either. A lot of companies rose then fell in the home computer market. IBM themselves haven't pursued the home market in decades at this point. Many, if not most, segments consolidated to the point that there was just one company with any meaningful market share. It could even be argued that the real money these days isn't in the hardware or software for the home market, but in the services they enable access to.