I don't exactly see how it bumps up the profit though. You have a bunch of obviously interested customers, who want your product, and then the company has come out with "Actually, we expect you to buy the phone twice, because of a mistake that may or may not of been your fault"
Remember the hassle WhatsApp got for failing open?
The Blackphone+SilentOS is an actual crypto device for people who believe they need crypto. It needs to fail closed. This may cost some people $100, but save their lives.
This also gives the customers the ability to sue the sellers, or at least push for refunds via the sales platforms.
If the user is informed they have a non genuine device that is not safe or secure (e.g. like Windows' nag notification), then they can't expect it to work like a secure device, but more like an ordinary phone.
Then both normal consumers (who will continue to use the phone since they didn't really care too much in the first place about safety) and security conscious consumers (who will re-buy asap) would be more inclined to use the same brand in the future
If my smoke/heat/etc detector starts to fails I don't want it silently dropping back to a smoke-only detector. I want it to start beeping loudly and refuse to stop.
> If the user is informed they have a non genuine device that is not safe or secure
Having to flash a new OS onto it is an appropriately sized clickthrough for a warning of that magnitude. Like being woken in the night to change a smoke-detector battery.