Well the idea was good the implementation sucks as usual. Android without the play store is not as useful or flexible and you can't compete with other budget phones which do have the play store so you're shooting yourself in the foot.

As log as there's an easy way for end users to put it on it shouldn't be such a big deal though.

What I suspect they are attempting to do is get back into the low budget phone market which they used to rule before they stupidly gave it up voluntarily and the only reason they are using Android is because it's the only one suitable for that hardware however this is not the old low end market they used to know.

Before it used to be acceptable to have only a few crap apps for phones but now even the low budget phones have access to the play store. I wonder if they will make it with this self inflicted handicap.