[aspenmayer]

The Flipper Zero and its success through direct crowdfunding proves that if you build it, and this next step is equally important to the first, if you build a community around it to directly market it effectively with reversible crowdfunding, you don’t have to wait for them to then come, as they’re already here, right there with you.

[gruez]

Flipper zero doesn't really have a competitor, aside from maybe a bunch of bulky equipment that fits on a table. Such a feature phone would be competing against iPhones/Pixels, both of which are pretty secure and have dedicated security teams. Any new product would have to compete on price/feature/reputation, which would be tough.

[aspenmayer]

The success of the Raspberry Pi proves that existence of competitors is no impediment to success with the proper connections with vendors and with the community.

The OpenWRT One is another example of collaborating with community trusted vendors to build a niche community based hardware product.

https://openwrt.org/toh/openwrt/one