Because there is no "over sensitive post-snowden wiki-leak era".
Sure, there is Snowden and there is Wikileaks, but it didn't create a new era. Some people noticed it, but it's just a tiny avalanche running down a random mountain that barely derserves the name. It's not a huge glacier announcing a new ice age.
It just looks big from your perspective (and from mine and everyone else's in this thread) because we happen to be right inside the avalanche.
Everybody else in the world doesn't care. Most don't even notice.

Because these BILLIONS you see don't exist. How many billion people worldwide are even in a potential position to think about such a bagatelle topic like a "privacy phone"? One?

I talked to several people I know personally about the Neo900. Most of them are intelligent people (well, at least I like to think so, otherwise I wouldn't talk to them). They all find the Neo900 a good idea, but none of them is as IT- or privacy-affine as I am. They are just not willing to pay 500 Euros (original optimistic estimate) for a device that to them is essentially a heavily outdated smartphone.
They just don't care enough for privacy to do that - just as I don't care enough for healthy food to stay away from frozen pizza, or for fair production to stay away from electronics made in China from resources mined somewhere in Africa.
How many people who care enough to consider buying a Neo900 do you know? ("know" as in: "I drink a beer with him every friday evening.")