I have no idea who’s less wrong, Google or Epic, but I’m not sure I like your idea.
Smartphones and PDAs existed for couple decades now, I’ve got a first PDA in 2000 or so. For many years before iPhone they were very niche products
I’m not sure we had the explosion in popularity (followed by technical improvements of both hardware and software) had it not be the financial incentive from paid content, initially music, apps followed a year later. Hardware design, software development, and marketing are all very expensive, someone had to pay for them or the smartphones would stay being niche products for geeks and corporations.
If what you wrote in the comment would become a law, this would remove motivation to do investments like that.
Would be especially bad for game consoles. The hardware is often sold below the costs in the start of each lifecycle, then technical progress catches up bringing costs down, and vendors are getting their profits. Stores help as well. The strategy ain’t gonna work if the app.store is not linked to the hardware, as soon as the HW costs are down other people would offer compatible hardware for less money. Hardware compatibility within generation is another hard problem to solve.
About Linux, when Torvalds made it, PCs were expensive tools for business and engineers. If you’re a businessperson or engineer, you have access to comparable tools with smartphone hardware. Search the web for “qualcomm snapdragon single board computer” and you’ll find many. There’re even affordable options now, I have 2 single-board computers on my desk next to a bunch of other hardware, both were under $100.