> it was a commercially unsuccessful product.

Was it?

According to the article "A Businesweek article cited sales of 215,000 units and said it was 1995’s best-selling PC laptop." As the article says, $3,799–$5,649 was "not cheap, but not absurd at the time."

For reference the PowerBook 500 series sold "almost 600,000" units in 1994-1996 according to Wikipedia and the color screen models were $2,900-$4,840.

I doubt its discontinuation had that much to do with the price. A lot of Japanese market electronics until ~2010 were intended to capture that season's bonus pay in one big batch and then go out flush by the next one, more like movies than cars, or iPhones today. All all-new and groundbreaking every halves of years.

Moore's Law was in full effect too, everything was going obsolete as quick as time itself. Specifications values inflated in orders of 10^2 units per week, whether it was megahertz or megapixel or megabytes or grams. Making last year's new product, even with parts upgrades, was waste of time.

I'd say the foldable screen-not-broken-by-hinge large tablets ASUS ZenBook 17 and Huawei MateBook are in the same spirit - innovative and expensive. One can live without, though would be nice to have.