As long as customers are OK with ads, I agree there won't be massive pressure to develop alternatives. But if other factors were changed, the necessary level o

As long as customers are OK with ads, I agree there won't be massive pressure to develop alternatives. But if other factors were changed, the necessary level of "I hate ad platforms" pressure might be reduced. I can imagine a world with only 10% of people using the alternative platform, but still having it survive. I think the larger problem with my vision is simply that its not in line with the visions of the various competitors I listed. Everyone believed they could create their own separate mobile fiefdom (Amazon's Android fork, Windows Phone, Tizen, etc).