How would that even work? (I'm not being difficult here, I just don't understand).
Assume Google is split up, Android is not maintained because doing so is not profitable. Each handset manufacture still needs an OS, and will just make custom forks or whole OS. They're not going to wind down operations because Android stops being a thing
I don't think it meaningfully increases IOS market share?
If Android splinters into a bunch of separate incompatible forks, then no one's going to bother writing apps for these phones (because they'd have to separately maintain a dozen different versions of them), and will just concentrate on iOS. No one will want a phone that doesn't have the most popular apps, unless they're just really cheap. The only reason Android survives is because you can get an Android version of just about any app, and if that goes away, most of the value of having an Android phone disappears. I know a lot of HN old-timers just don't understand this at all because they don't use apps and only use a phone for calling the phone numbers of people they already know, but apps are the real reason smartphones became popular in the first place. So this will turn Apple into a true monopoly vendor, owning virtually all the smartphone market.
Assume Google is split up, Android is not maintained because doing so is not profitable. Each handset manufacture still needs an OS, and will just make custom forks or whole OS. They're not going to wind down operations because Android stops being a thing
I don't think it meaningfully increases IOS market share?