Well, the simple answer is "no one could really compete". While this might make all the fanbois here nervous, and distressed. You have to remember that HTC has what? 5-7 employees? With how many doing the programming?
Oleg has what? A staff of 30-something experienced programmers, he can hire twice that number if he wants. As someone said, the salaries in Russia are a joke, you can find people working for cabbage for crying out loud.