NEO is a strong platform because they had a big community and supported by lot of Chinese people, I also find a lot of new ICO's that is using NEO platform because they said that it is much secured compare to Ethereum platform.
Of course, I agree with your statement. NEO is a potential altcoin because it is a strong altcoin with an increasingly large community. However, for now ethereum is still the best, maybe one day NEO will follow it.