I really believe that NEO could potentially be a huge competitor and an alternative to Ether.
Below are some differences between the 2 alt coins
Backers
NEO is backed by many Chinese enterprises and is the single most important factor behind NEO's popularity in China.
Ethereum on the other hand is supported by the EEA-Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.Not only in China,ethereum audience is Global.
Divisibility
NEO is not divisible. It can only exists in whole numbers (1,2,6,10,100)
Ether is divisible. It can be divided into satoshi
mechanism
NEO make use of a consensus mechanism (Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerant ) , which is an improved form of proof-of-stake.
Ethereum uses a proof-of-work mechanism although etherum is looking forward to looking to proof of stake.
dBFT is seen as more energy efficient than proof-of-work, as proof-of-work usage of energry is huge and highly expensive considering high electicity price. However, I dont see this as a big advantage for NEO as Ethereum has plans to move to an efficient proof-of-stake mechanism.
Speed
NEO can handle up to 9,000 t/s
Ethereum can handle 15 t/s
This is currently NEOs biggest advantage but ether could soon catch up to it as Ethereum blockchain enter its next Phrase
Actually no one actually know what the future will behold.Both Neo and Ether are new and yet to deliver on their core promises yet.Once things start to happen, we will know which Altcoin will be the better one.