100% agreed. It was a very clever play by a search engine company.

What intrigues me about the Android-equation and the way it entered Googles' playbook is that, indeed, the game is not over. Any other young upstart can arise, almost immediately, and challenge the hegemony .. all you have to do is be willing to commit to a real platform strategy.

I believe the Android vs. iOS challenge for the mainstream is a very vibrant industrial action; echoes of this gameplay can be definitely observed, elsewhere in the F/OSS eco-system. A fundamental difference between iOS/Android: one is closed, the other is open. A new, open challenge to Android could indeed eat its lunch, if the open challenge were won in such a way that it would attract the hunger-economy of the giants.

I personally would like to just have a phone that is 100% open source. I've had both Android/iOS in my life, equally, since inception, and ultimately I find the industrial-baggage load to be pretty high. In the new NSA era, what the hell is the point of trying to hide anything any more .. the new cool is completely open.

I bet it would solve the immense-cruft problem we can easily witness in heft with iOS/Android, as both platforms NIH/NIMBY their way across the 'developer mind-control' table.

Imagine this: someone builds a challenger OS, for free, that runs on everyones' phone, regardless of manufacturer-lockout/lockin. Methinks there are ways to do this under the radar right now ..

Only if you think most of them are Samsung Galaxies or Moto X's. Most of them are just replacements for the low end Nokia's that used to be predominant. A billion cheap phones is not a new statistic.