"Failure" here means they didn't manage to join the oligopoly themselves, and went bust instead, as network effects are a zero-sum game. By that metric, every

"Failure" here means they didn't manage to join the oligopoly themselves, and went bust instead, as network effects are a zero-sum game. By that metric, every flavour of Linux has also failed. Yet Linux is also heavily used and actively developed, serving an important purpose where Windows/Mac were not suitable. It helps that computer/server hardware and components are modular and not as tied to a particular OS as phones are.