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Well the point being that the smartphone market is suffering from poor alternative.

If so many people here seems to believe that neither iOS, nor Android, provide both flexibility and privacy they seek market opportunity might be ripe for new competitors.

The issue is that new competitors have to go against... Apple and Google. Given what happened to Epic (retaliation on Unreal Engine after #FreeFortnite), you can be sure that any competitor which would get a little bit of traction would be hammered into the ground by some Apple/Google money-powered shenanigans.

Samsung made phones before Android existed.

Plenty, Symbian, Bada OS before Android was born, and Tizen is a thing in Asian.