Personally I don’t think that the decline in Cakewalk / Sonar was due to their lack of protection, but due to other new competing products and their market segment. They felt like they fell in the middle. The producers focusing on loops had stronger options and it was adopted by as many pros. Undoubtedly still a great DAW, it’s just that it didn’t have it’s own place to sit to drive sales.
Good points on Steinberg re marketing and Halion. Protools was always marketed and promoted in professional studios, whereas Steinberg just didn’t do that. If they had, then they would have a much stronger foothold in those areas too. Kontakt is the go to because of better marketing by Native Instruments. Steinberg is an amazing DAW, but they’ve never really made it trendy. There’s a big chunk of users that all use Ableton and FL for those reasons (and price to an extent as well).
Cubase 12 they seem like they’ve got some great options for them too, so now they need to push to that market as well. They have a great product, but they need to get it into the hands of more people then it will be a winner. Those that use it love it, but too many never try it…