The fact is that every project can have a good potential, but everything will depend only on the actual demand in the society. If we consider Neo from the point of view of the competitor's etherium, then maybe he has very little chance of winning.
That's certainly true, mate. It will all depend on the level of demand that a specific project would experience within the mainstream world. While NEO is good as a cryptocurrency and as a smart contract platform, there have been many new competitors which have emerged with the same purpose of NEO. As such, the competition is getting stronger each day, where smart contract platforms bring their unique technology to help solve scalability issues and smart contract security.
As such, NEO would need some marketing/promotion, to help drive its usage and adoption within the mainstream world. Because if it doesn't, then most developers would use the leading smart contract platforms such as Ethereum and EOS to launch their dApps and Tokens. However, one thing for sure is that NEO has not been behind all the recent developments, since a few projects such as Ontology and Trinity Protocol have launched to help make the whole ecosystem better and stronger than ever.
Therefore, if NEO remains actively developed and supported by its community, then at some point in the future, it could be at the focus point as startups and companies launch their tokens on the NEO blockchain. Just my thoughts