None taken. It's probably not worth arguing who is right or wrong since none of us can reasonably assume we know what the future will be, but I will say that in general (1) diversity in ecosystems is good. (2) Monopolies are bad. Given only these two basic assumptions I think it's obvious that there should / will be a push for more diversity in mobile, and thus a larger number of platforms to develop for.
This can only lead to one result which is for developers to want a unifying platform on which to develop. I would argue that this exists, and is improving. It's called the web and web browsers enable this unifying platform.
> It's probably not worth arguing who is right or wrong since none of us can reasonably assume we know what the future will be, but I will say that in general (1) diversity in ecosystems is good. (2) Monopolies are bad.
Diversity is good, but too much diversity can be detrimental. A one-mobile-OS world is a terrible thing, since there's no need to push forward and improve. A two-mobile-OS world is better, as long as it's easy for users to switch to whatever is better at the current time. Once you get beyond three, you end up with a situation where it takes more and more development time to cover less and less of the market, and it becomes more likely that a single winner emerges (for example, the DOS-to-GUI transition in the 1980s-1990s).
There's still competition when you have multiple browsers. Companies might create a proposal for a standard and then implement it in their browser. This may or may not become a standard but usually it is pretty close. In this way we can have the benefits of diversity without the negatives like having to have different skill sets for each platform and then of course there is Apple's walled garden.
In my crazy future I hope there will eventually be 100's of legitimate mobile OSes.
One of the reasons this would be possible is because the responsibility of app development theoretically wouldn't be aligned vertically with the company that developed the OS, or with some platform that company is responsible for developing.
This can only lead to one result which is for developers to want a unifying platform on which to develop. I would argue that this exists, and is improving. It's called the web and web browsers enable this unifying platform.