> You explain in detail what it would take to compete with Apple, but you’re trying to make the point that this is impossible to do, when in fact many smartphone manufacturers have done precisely that.
You say "many smartphone manufacturers" but in practice there aren't actually that many smartphone manufacturers. Moreover, there is only really one -- Google -- which has actually done it. All the others license their software stack from Google. Even Microsoft made a serious attempt to do this and failed.
Your claim is that an individual app developer who wants to compete with an Apple app on iOS could feasibly do this?
You say "many smartphone manufacturers" but in practice there aren't actually that many smartphone manufacturers. Moreover, there is only really one -- Google -- which has actually done it. All the others license their software stack from Google. Even Microsoft made a serious attempt to do this and failed.
Your claim is that an individual app developer who wants to compete with an Apple app on iOS could feasibly do this?