The irony for me is that Android is no longer the scrappy little start up offering all sorts of options and freedoms that iOS (as is its philosophy) did not offer. Now both OSs are well established and moving towards a more common middle ground.
We’ve already seen more than one watchmaker move off Android Wear, and with the wake-up call with Huawei (you get Android Play Store through the grace of the US Government), and also what is happening around Facebook ‘censorship and control’, the time will soon be very ripe for the emergence of a new player/s.
The problem we’ve seen though with Facebook for example, is that it is very difficult to break into a market when there is such a sense of ‘comfort’ amongst the masses who use it (Google+ tried, and we have heaps of other options).
The bigger question for me is whether the future will still have Android dominating as it is, or will others break away from the Play Store and offer something different to differentiate themselves whilst still offering Android? Much may depend on devs posting to alternative app stores (which exist) or maybe the emergence of a new independent App Store away from Google or any OEM…
See Android 11 will not feature overscan, crippling navigation gesture apps
Google has confirmed that overscan is not present in Android 11. This change will cripple third-party navigation gesture apps and others.