Will a third major platform benefit Android users?

Yes. The minute things settle down to just two operating systems things will stagnate, a good example would be when the PC world settled into Windows 95 and Mac — from that moment on nothing really exciting happened on the desktop. In fact had Apple not stumbled onto the iPod it might have been just one operating system.

To me the most exciting time in the PC universe was the late 80s through the early 90s: In addition to Windows and Mac you had the Amiga, Atari, NeXT, BeOS, OS2, Solaris and I'm sure some other cool operating systems I've forgotten. That era also produced amazing desktop applications that changed my life like HyperCard, Photoshop, PageMaker, Director, MS Office, Lotus Notes, Netscape Navigator, etc.

So I hope this is the late 80s era of the medium rather than the late 90s era.