Earlier quoted context omitted.
Before Android killed them, webOS existed, as did Maemo.
Would you be willing to entertain that maybe they died because most people who used phones found those platforms to be weaker product offerings with the things they cared about and that your value system may have fundamentally differences? Would you further entertain that the inability to perceive such realities and differences and manufacturers inability to navigate these preferences is a major determinant of succes…
No.
I mean hahahahahah HELL NO not even close.
WebOS was great.
The only thing that made Android win was the brute force of Google, and the fact that Android was open source and WebOS was not (somehow, despite being Linux), and mismanagement by Palm.
"Weaker product offerings" isn't really an applicable idea for new entire ecosystems. He who can put up the most cash and marketing and special deals can create a new ecosystem from scratch that is by definition and necessity far weaker than others that have already existed for years, and still win by plain force.
When the iPhone came out, it had no 3rd party apps at all, while Palm and Windows devices existed for years. Particularly PalmOS had a massive rich diverse mature ecosystem of 3rd party apps.
I had a full screen, color, touch, grid icon home screen of 3rd party apps, internet connected, smartphone... In 2000, SEVEN YEARS before the first iPhone came out. I had a web browser, an ssh client, even a vnc client, Audible.com audio book player app, .. And every random app for every big and little purpose I coukdbthink of, from db apps to odd little things like a netmask calculator and resistor color code decoder, irc client, book reader, integrated contacts db phone dialer... Just like today, except better, no app store, and so no app store saying I can't have an app I want but Google or Apple doesn't. All this in 2000. 7 years before the "revolutionary" iPhone.
And even after the iPhone came out, not only were it's offerings weaker, they didn't exist at all. No 3rd party apps allowed at first.
Apple won because they are Apple. The phone hardware was a technical and design marvel, and Apple could afford to create a whole new world from scratch to displace an existing mature rich one thanks to plain money and size from years of iPod sales.
Google didn't have a stunning new device that blew away anything that came before, but they did have the money and the ability to make deals with carriers, and the open source angle. (I don't mean that consumers cared about that, I mean that letting everyone and their dog make a phone for free was an effective way to match Apple's deep with a Google wide.)
Android frankly sucked balls compared to WebOS for quite a while, both the os itself and the "offerings". But, Google. Palm. Come on.
I would agree that in the contest between Windows phone and either Android or IOS, MS had the size and resources to compete, and failed because they failed, not because there was no possible contest once someone that big decides to get in your game.