Comment by catapart

It's developer fantasy because no one was putting any money into this kind of project. Presumably, because the data showed there wouldn't be enough return from it. Which then implies that the data has updated to show that there is at least enough for a company like Motorola to put at least this much money in to it.

The whole point is that a company is going to try to market this developer fantasy to non-developers, assuming that what excites developers about it enough to discuss it will resonate with non-developers when they hear developers talk about their new phones.

It's not a guarantee of success or anything, but a lot of stuff works like this. Mozilla didn't gain market dominance (for a hot second in the early 2000's) because they marketed to non-devs. They just provided a superior product in every way to everything else at the time, and devs couldn't ignore that, so non-devs always dealt with non-microsoft browsers whenever the devs came around. That kind of "grass is greener" non-marketing is a real winner when the product is solid.

So here's hoping Motorola takes a great idea and builds a product so solid on it that people can't ignore it.