I think the Amstrad PCW has a rough equivalent here in the USA in the form of Brother word processors. These were essentially dedicated word processors, but they could run other software from floppies also … it’s just that there weren’t a whole lot of people developing software for them. They were integrated with 80 column amber monochrome CRTs.
They were less expensive than PC compatibles, but the real big appeal was that they were less scary to start using than “real” computers. The Brother brand was already familiar as a popular electric typewriter brand. So a customer who was intimidated by “real” computers could just get a Brother word processor and know that they could just turn it on and start typing.
(Never mind that we’re still talking an old school Word Perfect style word processor program, with the learning curve of keyboard function commands and such.)
Of course, Commodore tried to do something like this with the Commodore Plus/4 … you just turn it on, and you can start typing on the word processor built into ROM. Of course, this was not very successful. There are numerous reasons for this failure, but the most obvious is that it utterly failed to take advantage of the popularity of the C64 - and in fact worked against it in a puzzling way to end consumers and the press. In contrast, the success of Brother word processors built upon their success in the typewriter business.
The most straightforward lesson is to try and build upon one’s strengths rather than fight an uphill battle where one is neither established nor successful.
Commodore’s biggest success was, of course, the Commodore 64. It could have been built upon, but it wasn’t. Here in the USA, the C64 was a general purpose computer, but not very present in businesses.
But we shouldn’t ignore the success Amiga had in desktop video and the professional video industry. So, that’s why Commodore leaned into the video production capabilities (in NTSC, with genlock and Video Toaster capabilities in particular).
The CDTV was an attempt to build on the Amiga’s strengths in multimedia capabilities to pioneer the next big thing - multimedia appliances. Only … the entire anticipated market for multimedia appliances turned out to be non-existent. Other big boys like Philips CDi and Apple Macintosh Pippen would discover this also. All of the industry attempts to make multimedia appliances a thing failed miserably.
Of course, in Europe the C64 and Amiga were used more as game machines. So for better or worse, Commodore tried to lean into this with the laughable C64gs, and the more sensible CD32. We’ll never know how well the CD32 might have gone had certain unfortunate things happened, and if Commodore were in better financial shape at that time. Oh well.