throwaway45680's comments

Mac m1 exists thanks to iPhone profits.

In my world, people use whatever spying piece of crap browser a random app installed as a default for them. I really don't think anybody except a few enthusiasts would pay for a browser.

I hope you're not referring to the US and H1B workers, because if so, wait until you learn how hard it is to immigrate to the EU and how bad the situation of immigrant workers is here. These people would love to have something like H1B available here in EU. As an EU citizen, I feel very bad about the stuff we do to immigrants, and I hate how there's a class of unequal not-citizens among us, doing the dirtiest jobs the high EU society doesn't like to do.

It starts with access to healthcare insurance, for example. Try to get it as a non-permanent resident (who's not attending a school)! You have to have a job, there's no option to pay for yourself - unlike the US, where it's expensive but possible.

Yeah indeed, it just barely survives. Few years ago they had to shed all non-essential development (such as Servo).

It's pretty clear that's not enough to succeed.

Written from Firefox.

People get good hardware and sw support thanks to the reduced "freedom".

Play store allows basically anything (including obviously fake/scam/adware/spyware apps), there's nothing to be gained by doing this on Android, you'd lose an easy distribution mechanism that doesn't limit you, helps you gain victims and provides credibility - it's on top of Google then it must be good, right?

Also consider the market share of iOS and Android. Why bother for such small amount of price sensitive users?

iOS is another story entirely. The App Store has a lot of demands on the app developers wrt. UX, compatibility, etc; there's a lot of money to be saved (and faster time to market gained) by not publishing apps there. And then you can also bypass the security/privacy screening.