At the time custom hardware was much more common and was attractive, it would have needed rare foresight to bet on 386 a long time before x86 became attractive. Unix workstations, Amiga, etc were doing well and Intel hw was generally seen as pedestrian and stuffy with bad graphics, and 386 seemed like another attempt from intel to dig x86 out from the DOS hole (it broke compatibility with 286, OS/2 had targeted special 286 features...). 386 Unix vendors weren't doing that well either. NeXT Cube with 68040 was launched in 1990 and nobody knew intel was going to overtake Motorola. etc.