As a company that has a huge grip on higher end hardware sales, I definitely think they will stay in the space. That being said, product innovation certainly needs to happen for them to retain their dominance.
This includes VR/AR, less someone else gets to the the brand reputation throne first (like HTC or Microsoft).
I think HTC's got it for at least a year. It may continue longer. They'd need to do something wrong to lose the lead. MS Hololens is too expensive at the moment to get much reach. And I could make many comments about how Oculus/FB messed up a bit recently. However, I think everyone, including HTC, hopes that Oculus finds its stride again. More competition is better for everyone and will advance VR tech and the market reach faster. Gates and Jobs are on record saying Microsoft, Apple, and the world wouldn't have been as good without each other.
Sure, this is my opinion on the internet. I've no idea if the HTC and Facebook CEOs feel the same way about competition helping each other as Jobs [1] and Gates [2] said. But I imagine those at the top of massive organizations know a few things about being successful that might not be obvious to the rest of us. What Jobs and Gates said does ring true about their history.
Jobs explicitly pointed out that there was a toxic anti-Microsoft attitude at Apple when he returned, and getting rid of that was critical to their success [1].
> Just as its easy for Gates and Jobs to reminisce after the PC boom after the dust has settled, I doubt they were so romantic during.
That's also discussed in the Jobs/Gates interview. There were good and bad times, and historically speaking, they were not always so against each other. MS invested in Apple several times, and Apple took some risk partnering with them. Jobs pointed out Apple (really, himself) wasn't good at partnering with people, but Gates was, and he admired that [3].
[1] https://youtu.be/wvhW8cp15tk?t=23m42s