Yep. The way I remember it is that until MSVC 6, everyone was still using Borland or Watcom tools. Even up until the early 2000s, Borland C++ Builder was giving MSVC a run for the money. There was also a plethora of quality but smaller-marketshare tools like the Digital Mars stuff.
The real reasons C++ "beat" Obj-C have more to do with a) AT&T aggressively marketing C++ for at least 6 years before NeXT showed up on the scene, b) C++ being a little older then Obj-C in the first place, and c) Obj-C offering all the expressiveness of C with all the efficiency of Smalltalk (thank you, James Iry).
Even on Windows, all the C++ alternatives were way better until they released the 32 bit version of Visual C++.