With Windows and Intel locking down the enterprise, you really had to create some kind of premium brand like Apple did, not focus on the low end.
It was wedged between game consoles and PC’s, and it eventually couldn’t compete against neither.
Had the taken some money in hand and all-in-one Amiga 500 SoC that had some sales potential left, and combined that with a next generation chip set that could run the modern games of the early 90s I think you would have had a great product.
And Windows wasn't really actually good at all the games media stuff for a long time. I think the home market for that stuff was possible if somebody grabbed it along with continuing some higher level unix, video, audio workstations.
And many people who had one liked it and grew up with it. There was a market there. Many switched to PC simply because the product was no longer competitive. Many had grown up with the Amiga 500 and were ready for an upgrade.
If you look at what Acorn achieved with even fewer resources and a much worse market position. Imagine and ARM chip with modern chipset but Amiga 500 compatible. Maybe along with non-backwards compatible console version like the CD32.
Would it have been a hyper-growth company, I don't really think so, but survive for the rest of the 90s was possible.
Intel generally reject anybody trying to do their own thing. Sun also wanted to work with them SPARC.
Acorn eventually worked with VSLI Technologies, and that seems smoother then some of the earlier chip design technology cooperations I have read about.
I am kind of surprised still how complex original ARM actually was compared to 'pure' RISC. It could be considerably smaller. And it kind of insane how a tiny company did this and produced something faster then the insanely complex 32 bit VSLI designs from DEC, Motorola, Bell. RISC really was a complete cheat-code in that period.