This does seem like a more plausible explanation. Bitcoin Cash is worse for their application than Litecoin in pretty much every way: it has slower blocks so there's more chance of the price shifting before the transaction confirms, it has less exchange support, they had to create their own address format for it that existing Bitcoin Cash wallets don't even support sending to in order to ensure people didn't accidentally send bitcoins there, and so on. However, it does have the major advantage for Bitcoin miners that their existing mining hardware can be used for it.
> Bitcoin Cash is worse for their application than Litecoin in pretty much every way
Litecoin will have the same scalability problems as bitcoin core, and it hasn't attracted a cutting edge-team that will be likely to try a different approach to improve the situation. Litecoin is a clone using recycled code and ideas from bitcoin. Clones with stale ideas don't generally eclipse their originators.