"shrinking market" or "limited market-share" is simply an ignorant position - There are a lot more Toyotas (large market-share) than Mercedes, but few would argue that a Benz is a bad car!

Quantity does not mean quality...

My read on Delphi is third-party via one of my ex-programmers - he liked it very much, thought it was more "stable" than VFP (however, it was back in the days of VFP3, the first and buggy version of VFP).

I can do anything I want in VFP. If I was in your position I would make a list of "showstoppers" and "absolute gotta-haves". Whatever environment fit in (or out of) these lists would point me to the correct choice. Also, I cross-platform into Linux is a "reasonable" possiblity trhen Delphi is your choice.

Bill