You have fair points and much more experience than I have in this domain.

Yeah, $5 even at a 1M users is probably not that much, having to maintain drivers, and as you mentioned serving updates, that would require a team.

With regards to the Google apps, I think a company would be better off trying to make something of their own, or collaborate with some app makers, at least for difficult stuff like maps, camera, gallery, browser(not sure about the paid codecs)

As for the app store, I know that's a big project, but that would have to be custom and a core product of the company.

Hope you'll eventually find a way to monetize your ROM.