Yeah, that makes sense on the hardware end. It's really hard to compete and even some large players like LG ultimately fell out because of that.

But I was more speaking on the software end. You can certainly piss off Google if enough people decided to buy an android phone but have it boot up Linux instead. Might even piss off Samsung, so that's a plus. I assume the infrastructure to get APK support on Linux is a herculean task, though (that's the only way I see as a middleground until native linux apps work on mobile).

There is a way to run waydroid/android applications in Linux. I have personally tried it and honestly it does work great for the most part.