> Trying to create a competitive and compelling mobile experience today requires an ecosystem of apps, tooling and most importantly developers. I agree those t

> Trying to create a competitive and compelling mobile experience today requires an ecosystem of apps, tooling and most importantly developers. I agree those things are all important considerations but you're lumping too many things together. Some of those are antithetical. For example, buying into an existing app ecosystem means you don't get your own developer mindshare. And tooling doesn't suffer from network effects the same way app stores and developers do. For example, they could use Android but write a new UI framework. They'd still make use of Android tooling, get partial entrée into the Android developer mindshare, but divest of the app base. Personally I don't think a phone startup can succeed without creating a new UI framework around a new paradigm, whether it's VR, social, AI, semantic Web, or whatever. Facebook had the right idea although they failed. If you are just competing for the same users with the same apps you will lose to Samsung. You need a new app base. Imagine a game console that only had multiplatform games. Who would buy it? A game platform with no third party games but a few compelling (to a niche) first party ones would have a better foundation.