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The market buys a lot of things, such as e-ink readers due to LCD sucking in direct sunlight. If the deliberately restricted market of e-ink opens up a bit due to real competition and is able to actually act like the market you describe then I think there will be room in the market for more devices.
Your snarky "market" comment is amusing considering the topic. Do you really know that little about what has been going on with e-ink for a decade?

But does it?
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/...
http://goodereader.com/blog/el...
http://www.mobileindustryrevie...

The e-ink readers has been in a decline for long and have had their peak "many" years ago.

The other guy said "oh buy you don't need color and animation for this purpose!" - yeah, that's the same Amazon argue and that's why their e-ink readers still suck. "But we don't need it because books don't have colors!" (or animations) - If you build it they will come. I don't fucking care that for thousands of years it's been ~black ~ink on ~pale surface of some sort for text. There's been other things too but that for text. I still want more, there's other things with more (magazines, comics, photos, ..)
The new Kindle Oasis is £270!! £270!!!! That's more than the fucking One Plus 3!!
It still has a shitty small grey-scale screen which is somewhat good for one purpose alone and that's to show black and white text. £270!! (And they don't even sell to Sweden.)
Heck, even I could likely get laid for less!

The person asking the question thinks the solution to needing to provide Wifi Hotspots is to use cellular based devices and maybe try to find a way to get better 4G coverage.

You're trying to solve the wrong problem. Using 4G to provide wifi has several drawbacks, first is cost. Second, you can't get the bandwidth you really need, and third, you have to compete with every device there trying to connect to thier cellular provider. Provide hotspots with Wifi Routers getting their connections from a wired source instead. Ideally, you'd run wires to your wifi access points but if you can't do that very well in some places, use wifi repeaters.

If putting wires to the places you need access points is really a serious problem that you can't solve with wifi repeaters, then use microwave. It's not too expensive to set up and it can give you a no-wires high bandwidth internet connection for long distances.

Since the wrong question was asked, it is hard to provide the right answer, but here are some tips:

• If money isn't the problem, let AT&T provide Wifi. It might even be the cheapest option since you may not have to buy the equipment. At least find out how much it will cost you. (Other service providers might work as well, I just haven't had others offer to provide proposals in the last few years.)
• If you're thinking "but LTE is good enough" then read this: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/broadband-grudge-match-cable-vs-dsl-vs-4g/
• If you're needing to provide large crowd service, say 20,000 people plus in a small space, read this: http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/08/new-series-how-to-deliver-wifi-for-10000-delegates-properly.html
• If you're questioning whether you should provide wifi, read this: http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/ANowDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=181334
• If you think you need to set up wireless access points at distances that make cabling impractical, read this: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/78459.html
• If you don't need that kind of range, and just need better wifi coverage, look into Wifi repeaters, like this one from Radioshack for $99.99: Amped Wireless® High-Power Wireless-N 600mW Smart Repeater, Model:SR10000 Catalog #: 55055046

If anything, while Apple is keeping carriers from locking you into their services (well, mostly. Visual Voicemail was AT&T-only, right? right. Sure that was a collaborative effort, but I'm not sure that doesn't make it worse.) they instead lock you into their services.

You are right and you are missing the point. If the services come from Apple, then that guarantees that the services will be updated to support the latest features of their newest phones. This stopped the carriers messing with the phone interface for short term commercial gain.

N.B. Visual voicemail is an Apple patented feature. It could be available on any network that wants it working. I guess they have to pay or do some integration though? I guess this article about visual voicemail in Britain shows exactly why Apple need their features to be independent of the mobile carriers.

I'm going back to the Blackberry now that amateur hour is starting!

Though I can't tell if the TechnoBuffalo gig is new, or was a side job while he was still at PhoneDog, but it looks like it was not a side job.

And Noah was once Editor-in-Chief at PhoneDog. I think they miss him. These divorces are often messy.

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2009/10/why-the-ovi-store-is-still-total-bollocks.html

http://dailymobile.se/2009/05/26/ovi-store-a-complete-disaster/

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90439

Nokia just isn't innovating anymore. What's Meego got in terms of user experience that iPhone OS doesn't? "Freedom" is a joke. Freedom is why my Windows mobile devices sucked balls("If you see a task manager, they did it wrong"). Losing freedom in a mobile handset isn't like being put into martial law. It's just a damned phone.

Nokia was late to the game with multitouch and centralized app sales. They may be selling more units than Apple, but, for how long?

"All smartphones have unlimited data (or "unlimited" as the case may be) anymore"

I assume you mean all smartphones have unlimited data NOW. How do you suppose that came about? It wasn't the case when the iPhone was released. So no, I'm not partially wrong. Here are some articles written around the time of the iPhone release. Unlimited data plans (particularly unlimited plans at reasonable prices) were not at all universal:

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2007/11/o2s_iphone_unlimited_data_unlimited_woo.html

http://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/9794

http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2007/06/iphone_unlimited_data.html

When the iPhone was released it almost required (maybe it did require in the US?) subscription to an unlimited plan. Read the last link. Either Apple told AT&T it was no deal without reasonably priced unlimited data plans for the iPhone or AT&T decided on their own (it's hard to say which). But if they're going to offer unlimited data at a low price, AT&T has to put some restrictions on it -- no tethering. Yes, it was probably short sighted not to offer ANY tethering option. Yes, it took a long time to fix that.

It's quite reasonable that AT&T won't let you tether your $30 unlimited iPhone data plan. You say yourself that you have to pay almost twice as much for a tethering plan!