True. We need a 3rd player on this market that does not do surveillance and produces products with reasonable price. A business focused phone would be great. There are very few applications that you could get away.
Business focused and reasonable price usually don't go together.
Anyway, you had Blackberry which was well regarded in the business world. But they are losing to Apple and Android, and now a Blackberry is just another Android smartphone. They still provide physical keyboards though.
On the consumer side, you had Windows Phone that tried to compete with Android. It was actually a nice OS, coming from a companies that did smartphones before Apple, and with one of the best regarded manufacturers at the time (Nokia) on their side. It didn't work.
The other alternatives include the Samsung backed Tizen, and now Sailfish OS.
All that to say that we had some attractive alternatives, backed by major players, and yet, no one wants to leave iOS and Android, even when provided with a compatibility layer.
Windows had a distinct identity, a better home screen and an inbuilt dark mode that worked amazingly well with AMOLEDS.
They also had great battery life and ran faster on low powered devices vs android of the time.
It died for good reason, but it certainly was a shame. I would love to see Windows take shot at it again, but I doubt they will.
At this point, Samsung or Xiaomi may be the ones best poised to take on the current duopoly.
There are other options, or will be other options, i.e. the librem 5 (https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)
The problem is that "out of the box" it's more or less a similar experience to the first iPhone. It's a phone, with messaging and a browser.
None of the apps you've come to depend upon are there.
Here in Denmark, where digitization of the society is well underway, you're pretty much lost without official apps. You _can_ use a browser for most things, but since there are apps, almost none of them are optimized or even usable on a phone screen.
Below is just a small portion of the things that would be impractical to live without with a "non supported phone". (impractical, not impossible!)
* Our country wide common sign on solution, NemID (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NemID) also has a smartphone app. The solution is used for authentication with all government and financial institutes, along with a lot others. The keycard remains a viable solution, for now.
* Most mail is delivered through e-boks (https://www.e-boks.com/corporate/en), which includes bank statements, insurance policies, tax records, building permits, sanitation and other. The solution is open for every company to use. It is also possible to reply to a sender through this solution. (requires NemID signon)
* Banking is done through an app. (requires NemID signon)
* Person to Person payments (including the option to split a bill), and to some extent in-shop payment is being handled by MobilePay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobilePay). It's kinda like PayPal, but a local solution. (requires NemID signon)
* Communication with schools and kindergartens is done through "SkoleIntra" and "Børnenettet", or "Tabulex" for when school is over. This includes teacher to parent communications, homework assignments, parent to parent communication, vacation registration, calling in sick, and more. It's probably the most hated system in the world :)
* Even receipts from a wide selection of shops are digitized and delivered to an app (https://en.storebox.com/#/), allowing easy access (and tracking of your shopping habits / credit card usage)
* Even emergency services has an app that will allow you to call emergency services, and it will relay your position to the operators so they know exactly where you are.
