Exactly right. Saying it another way: the market doesn't demand what ocaml offers.
The market demands different qualities at different times (and in any market, there will often be niches that need different qualities from the rest of the market). The "market" is probably best represented by paying customers, but other parties (managers, developers and users in general) also have an effect. What does the market demand at the moment?
It seems that at the moment, time-to-market (i.e. fast development) is most in demand. This includes being "agile": able to add features quickly, improve them or change them, and to debug them. This is driven by development speed, which can decrease both time-to-market and development costs (and therefore customer price). Other qualities, like performance (runtime speed) and memory usage seem less important. Reliability seems less important.
However, there are different parts of the market that value these differently. For example, the financial market value correctness, so it's not surprising that ocaml has found a home in janestreet. Space shuttle software also does. I would say that in desktops, quadcore, 4GB RAM performance now outstrips what many people need, resulting in the hiccup of "netbooks", and finally the smartphones - much less powerful, but customers are willing to buy them because they offer convenience.
Within smartphones, performance of software became important again, because within the category (given convenience) the hardware hasn't yet outstripped demand for it.
Another example is in MS Windows, when it first got an adequate GUI interface in windows 95, people bought it in droves even though it was buggy and unreliable. Then, combining it with NT in Windows XP, it became reliable, and people bought that. Then, security was the issue, and that got fixed. It may seem a little surprising that Windows 7 is popular, but one thing is that all those books and sites about "windows annoyances" mean that there's room for windows to improve... which means they can sell another version. If it no one complained because it was perfect, that would be bad news for microsoft. (of course, their run may be over now, if smartphones replace the desktop, and they can't win that market away from apple).
Now, just because development speed has been important for a while doesn't mean it always will be. Reliability and performance may become more important again, especially in niche markets. And it is there that ocaml may have an opportunity.
But meanwhile, although ocaml is amazing in that it has the expressiveness of functional programming, the correctness of strong typing, and the performance of C, it is a double straightjacket language: first it has to be functional (though you can mutate, it's not as nice); then it has to be strongly typed. You can't just code it they way you think about it. You have to adapt yourself to the machine. (note: this is based on my personal experience with ocaml).
tl;dr
OCaml has many benefits, which I don't question. What I am saying is that the mainstream market doesn't currently value those particular benefits of ocaml over other attributes.
The market demands different qualities at different times (and in any market, there will often be niches that need different qualities from the rest of the market). The "market" is probably best represented by paying customers, but other parties (managers, developers and users in general) also have an effect. What does the market demand at the moment?
It seems that at the moment, time-to-market (i.e. fast development) is most in demand. This includes being "agile": able to add features quickly, improve them or change them, and to debug them. This is driven by development speed, which can decrease both time-to-market and development costs (and therefore customer price). Other qualities, like performance (runtime speed) and memory usage seem less important. Reliability seems less important.
However, there are different parts of the market that value these differently. For example, the financial market value correctness, so it's not surprising that ocaml has found a home in janestreet. Space shuttle software also does. I would say that in desktops, quadcore, 4GB RAM performance now outstrips what many people need, resulting in the hiccup of "netbooks", and finally the smartphones - much less powerful, but customers are willing to buy them because they offer convenience. Within smartphones, performance of software became important again, because within the category (given convenience) the hardware hasn't yet outstripped demand for it.
Another example is in MS Windows, when it first got an adequate GUI interface in windows 95, people bought it in droves even though it was buggy and unreliable. Then, combining it with NT in Windows XP, it became reliable, and people bought that. Then, security was the issue, and that got fixed. It may seem a little surprising that Windows 7 is popular, but one thing is that all those books and sites about "windows annoyances" mean that there's room for windows to improve... which means they can sell another version. If it no one complained because it was perfect, that would be bad news for microsoft. (of course, their run may be over now, if smartphones replace the desktop, and they can't win that market away from apple).
Now, just because development speed has been important for a while doesn't mean it always will be. Reliability and performance may become more important again, especially in niche markets. And it is there that ocaml may have an opportunity.
But meanwhile, although ocaml is amazing in that it has the expressiveness of functional programming, the correctness of strong typing, and the performance of C, it is a double straightjacket language: first it has to be functional (though you can mutate, it's not as nice); then it has to be strongly typed. You can't just code it they way you think about it. You have to adapt yourself to the machine. (note: this is based on my personal experience with ocaml).
tl;dr OCaml has many benefits, which I don't question. What I am saying is that the mainstream market doesn't currently value those particular benefits of ocaml over other attributes.