Re: Phone makers PLEASE take note
This has been the aim of much of the IT industry for decades. The "walled garden".
They provide the users with a series of "apps" that they believe the users would really, really want ( because the marketing dept. told them that). With the aim of discouraging users looking elsewhere.
AOL might well have invented the idea- trying to keep hold of web surfers by creating their own internet.
Google pretty much relies on this. Android-Chrome-docs-mail-Drive (cloud storage)-etc.
Microsoft, which had accidentally got this, has been desperately trying to hold on to it, with varying degrees of success ever since.