They weren't really late. In many people's minds IBM validated the concept of the PC.
When that happened I'd been working at Tandy (EU version of Radio Shack) for a while and even though we sold computers they were not taken serious until IBM came along and then suddenly we couldn't supply them fast enough.
Was Tandy only EU? In the TRS-80 days the name came up a lot, although maybe just because of the acronym ... 6809E was a good time
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