Lack of apps certainly helped kill the Blackberry phones. I liked my BB phones before the smartphone era got into full swing. But afterwards they were disappointing because you could only get a handful of useful apps. Research in Motion never understood that. I guess they thought they had a strong enough business clientele to survive, but business people wanted apps too.

On the Fire OS devices you can install the Google Play Store, but a lot of people probably have no clue about that. Plus you have to know what you are doing. In this day and age, most people probably don't want to buy a new device then have to spend hours or days modifying it to fit their needs. They just want it to do everything they desire and need right out of the box. Techies don't mind doing mods, but most consumers are not techies.