Marginalia
It might seem strange, given what we know about MSX, to compare this system to Windows Phone, which was an American product through and through (albeit with the help of a failed Finnish acquisition).
To an outside observer, it might seem like the better comparison point for the MSX platform might be the Xbox, which like the MSX, is best known for its games.
But if you look a bit more closely at the structure of the platform, it becomes clear that MSX and Windows Phone actually share much more in common than at first glance. Each was an also-ran in its given market—MSX, while successful in Japan, was a relatively small player even there, with machines from NEC, Fujitsu, and Sharp proving more successful, even though these competitors were often proprietary. MSX was ultimately an early version of what Microsoft would later do on its more tightly controlled platforms, Windows Phone in particular.