It was, but never really became relevant because most people switched to C# + WinForms and never looked back.
As there was never (as far as I know) an easy way to migrate existing apps from VB6 to VB.NET, the main reason to use VB.NET would have been a preference for the BASIC syntax, which I don't think was ever particularly common, this was always just a loud minority. And a significant part of this minority also didn't like VB.NET because even this was too different from what they were used to.
Keep in mind the only 2 good GUI tools at the time, IIRC, were VB6 and Delphi. VC++ and stuff like MFC was overly complicated, and the Java stuff was garbage. As neither VB6 nor Delphi used a C-family language, you had a lot of people using them just because it was a better tool, not because of a preference for the language.
As there was never (as far as I know) an easy way to migrate existing apps from VB6 to VB.NET, the main reason to use VB.NET would have been a preference for the BASIC syntax, which I don't think was ever particularly common, this was always just a loud minority. And a significant part of this minority also didn't like VB.NET because even this was too different from what they were used to.
Keep in mind the only 2 good GUI tools at the time, IIRC, were VB6 and Delphi. VC++ and stuff like MFC was overly complicated, and the Java stuff was garbage. As neither VB6 nor Delphi used a C-family language, you had a lot of people using them just because it was a better tool, not because of a preference for the language.