2. Making quality products is not mutually exclusive from building quality products, I hate to bring them up as an example but not many people could argue that apple produces mass produced garbage, and they do fairly well on the money side.
Agree with you 100% that quality is key to success. I just chose to focus on the business & financial side of things, since at the time I started this blog there weren't many people writing about their experiences with Android.
I'm skeptical, but I don't have figures. Still, a race to the bottom and near-zero margins, because crap is easy to replicate, seems like a bad plan for real profits.
I'm not saying that it's bad to make money - quite the opposite! All I'm saying is that shitty software sucks. Writing it sucks, selling it sucks, buying it sucks and using it sucks. Build cool stuff instead.
Sure, with enough marketing, spinning, social engineering you can make anything sell well, but if customers feel screwed they'll eventually avoid you like the plague. At least that is what I believe.
(yes -- I know you can also state the opposite "there is a sucker born every minute, have suckers as your target audience". But I don't work that way)