Re: Smartphone rather than the OS
Most PC never had the "cool" factor, especially the beige boxes. Only a few Apple models had it. But by them Intel had won the CPU war (eventually, Apple had to capitulate too...).
Still, under the hood people wanted the newer and fastest CPU, or graphic card - "Oh, you have a 386SX? Slow, compared to my 486DX...". You knew some software, especially games, wouldn't run with the wrong hardware.
Apple was able to play its card again with the smartphone - it turned it into a status symbol (and it's much easier to show off with a smartphone than a desktop PC...), so yes, some people choose devices because they show their "status" (true, or pretended) as well - even if under the hood is still mostly the same ARM processors and a bunch of the same chips.
But the availability of applications isn't secondary. Today, people need to be "socialites" and "chat" with their groups, so the lack of some widespread applications can hurt. Maybe many people won't complain if an ephemeris applications to plan landscape photos is lacking, but it they can't control their IoT stuff or their bank doesn't have an app for their phone, they can change it.
Developers will target the OS with more users and thereby prospective sales - only a few will target less used OSes. Look at what happened with Windows Phone. Or, looking back for a Windows comparison, to OS/2. Even Linux is not appealing to most desktop applications developers, and thereby still lags greatly behind Windows and macOS.
Samsung can make its own OS, but it would have to compel developers to bring their applications there, or make them itself. Others failed at that in the past, especially when there are big established players. Even Palm failed when it switched from PalmOS to WebOS - fully rewriting applications is never appealing to devs.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
