>The whole selling point of Android up until now was that it allowed you to install any app you want.

Could've fooled me. Maybe it was a thing a decade ago when android just launched, but none of the marketing pages for vaguely recent phones has that as a selling point. At best it's a meme that android proponents repeat on hn or reddit.

We're not talking about phones, we're talking about an operating system. If those companies could port IOS to their phone, they probably would. Since the OS will be mostly the same across devices, it makes sense to market a phone based on hardware differences -- like having a higher quality camera.

I've never met or talked to an android user that truly believes android is better technology or a better user experience. They all use it because of flexibility.