OTOH, Samsung's software r&d prowess, even today, is far from the standard needed to maintain a top class (mobile) OS, leave alone creating or polishing it. You

OTOH, Samsung's software r&d prowess, even today, is far from the standard needed to maintain a top class (mobile) OS, leave alone creating or polishing it. You can imagine where it would have been at that time. So yeah, they made the right move knowing their strength and weakness.