Notably, this was already much the same situation for the early "professional GUI", like the Xerox Star, or Perq (and, to a certain extent, the LISA, aiming at the low end of that market, centering on general productivity). In the early 1980s, it was really too early for this, without major investments in opening up that market in the first place. (In other words, it was really about the imaginary of what an organization or business was and how it should operate. As it turned out, nothing in this was self-explanatory.) At this stage, Jobs is clearly hoping for that market developing its own momentum, as organizations were becoming aware of the technology. Nevertheless, NeXt still failed, like its predecessors.

I guess, in the end, nothing substantial really became of that market, with evolving capabilities from the general productivity market eventually swallowing that segment. Which is also pretty much the story of NeXt Step's afterlife in OS X. Notably, and not entirely without irony, the professional GUI was a major prerequisite for this development kicking off, for having commercial GUIs and powerful general productivity appliances, at all, but it was still pretty much doomed to fail, right from the beginning.