While we're getting a bit into "flame war" territory, it's hard to argue that the current iteration of Android is an "open platform"; practically speaking, most of the useful features of the OS are hidden in the (closed) Google Play Services. Yes, you can go for a custom ROM, but not on all devices and most people don't want to deal with the effort/UX downgrade.

What makes you think they're getting the data from Apple? The entire OS is sandboxed and siloed out the proverbial wazoo, and Apple is demonstrably a very pro-privacy company that doesn't allow most forms of carrier fuckery.

Apple has the power here. Verizon needs the iPhone on their network more than Apple needs to support Verizon as a carrier.

If you can demonstrate that, you could use that knowledge to make a ton of money in various ways.

If you can't, bluntly, you're blowing smoke.

Which is it?

Are you sure? It seems like Android 6.0 and up has features to allow carriers to deploy code to devices with their SIM cards: https://source.android.com/devices/tech/config/carrier.html

I am honestly unsure of the limits on this feature.