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That's pretty interesting. I was around back then and hadn't recalled that there was such a lynchpin issue, but that makes a lot of sense as to why it suddenly hit such a hard stop. Were you able to support WhatsApp with KaiOS, or did the feature-phone target make it moot?

Yes KaiOS has an official WhatsApp app. This was possible thanks to the market size of Jio in India, with > 120M devices shipped.

At the time, I had a FirefoxOS device made by ZTE in my hands.

It was so slow, it was unusable; even the first Android devices running on underpowered hardware were speed champions in comparison. Looking for an Whatsapp launcher was beyond the patience of even dedicated fans.

Somehow this chicken-egg problem isn't stopping GNU/Linux phones.

Sent from my Librem 5.

Indeed, but the go to market strategy was not the same. Librem 5 is still far from being a usable daily driver for most people.

And what is the market share of those phones on the mobile device market?

The market share is low for any new technology.