Yep, that's about right regarding the timeline of Lotus 123 versus MS Excel spreadsheets. Lotus kicked off the spreadsheet application but never really innovated on the HMI side. The innovator was the Quatro spreadsheet that brought tabbed workbooks and the ability to link between workbooks. MS Excel became dominant not because of a superior product but because of the MS Office bundling.
I am radically ticked off using MS Office now because the latest incarnation of Office and Windows 8.X have thrown KISS out in favor of HMI chaos.
Oh, the days of VisiCalc, MultiPlan, ...