I do not like walls of text, so I'll answer half before I go to sleep.
If you exclude my own, then 0. I am not in tech support.
Re: GIMP & LibreOffice: I often use these and have trouble recognizing why people hate them. The latter defaults to a worse interface for some reason while tabbed view is hidden behind a simple and great toggle. I feel like the hate on GIMP is because people try to impose proprietary paradigms and do not realize that a "find action" mennu exist.
how apple was able to sell even a single iphone when Windows Mobile was there already?
Windows Mobile was never there. Additionally, iPhone had charisma and massive marketing. Charisma is the thing that propels many things good and bad. There's even an entire book about this called "The Charisma Machine".
Microsoft was also facing federal prosecution around this time for monopolizing. The result of the case was forcing Microsoft to advertise other browsers, including Firefox and Chrome and Maxthon and two others, all of which gained significant market share. This reset the market, and eventually Firefox emerged as the victor by a bit, and then Chrome beat that bit. If that court case didn't happen, we'd still all be using some kind of Internet Explorer.
Why people are paying many times more on apple/samsung phones when far cheaper options are available in hundreds?
Because they are paying for the far cheaper options. While Apple and Samsung attract with big bucks on marketing and charisma, the 3rd largest phone seller worldwide is Xiaomi, the budget option.
why apple was able to beat sony
I'm noticing a pattern here of you bringing up examples of leaps and bounds/cross-generational products. If someone builds a browser comparable to the iPod, I doubt we'd even call it a browser anymore. Unless you have a next-gen product, people will remain on the default option.
You didn't mention any VLC installation numbers. Well it can be installed from many places on Android but here's just one source, play store.
It's over 100 million.
These are rookie numbers compared to the number of android phones sold worldwide. Subtract that by 100 million, and that's mostly all people who use the default option.