They failed to live up to any of their hype or any of their market goals. It didn&#x27;t revolutionize education. It didn&#x27;t sell much hardware, despite multiple hardware versions. It didn&#x27;t gain significant market share as an OS. It didn&#x27;t gain significant market share in Windows developer tools. When Apple bought them, the NeXT market was negligible enough that they basically stopped making anything for it.<p>They definitely had some success in niche markets, I think they turned a modest profit one year, and I don&#x27;t think their investors lost any money. But it&#x27;s not like they made a ton for the level of risk they took.<p>Yes, Jobs managed to make lemonade out of his multiple failures. But NeXT was never a commercial success.