Sure, but that was an entirely different world. 2011 was pre-Snowden leaks and before people ever considered what the modern era's tech giants would be doing. Google's motto was still Don't be evil and very few but the most privacy-conscious people disbelieved them. People had more skepticism of Microslop, but this was before the public had Windows 8, 10, or 11 pushed on them. There wasn't really a market for privacy-friendly mobile OS because the modern, smart mobile OSes had only existed for a few years at that point and the general public had not yet been majorly betrayed by Google, Apple, or M$ at that point.

The modern era of tech has been so terrible that even politically uninvolved and privacy unaware folks are frothing at their mouths about datacenters & surveillance cameras and showing up to city council meetings to actually do something about it.

Still, I don't expect mobile Linux to dominate, even when it's ready. But there are plenty of people who are asking for it, beyond those that you would assume.

Another key difference between Windows Phone failing and the hypothetical chance for mobile Linux to succeed is that Linux has the largest pool of software developers to pull from and an unfathomable amount of software that won't even need to be manually ported to work on phones (some will, but most modern software use portable graphics libraries like GTK, Qt, etc.,).

Contrast that with Windows Phone being a bespoke, locked-down ecosystem with Linux having developer tools that more open, easy to integrate, and better documented than any proprietary walled-garden ever did.

Getting apps for mobile Linux won't be an issue like it was for Windows Phone except for cases like banks and other draconian companies. And those are important exceptions, but those can be overcome just as Linux gaming has. If those companies refuse to build for us, then we will build for ourselves, and they will be forced to cooperate when we become undeniable.

And even if you don't share my optimism for what future mobile Linux adoption might look like, I think we can agree that regardless of mobile Linux's "market success", people are going to build it anyway because people will always build cool stuff just for the love of the game. I just wish large teams like Graphene would consider divesting from AOSP and start putting some effort into mobile Linux in the long term.