[rickdeckard]

Forks supported by manufacturers don't work, because they only earn money when selling hardware. So they can't each operate a huge platform maintenance team on their own.

Also, the only glue that actually holds Android in place as a single platform is Google's CTS (compatibility test suite).

Without it being mandated for Googles Mobile Services (GMS) and its revenue-share, Android will stop being a single platform.

It will start drifting apart as soon as all vendors have to implement the next display/camera/sensor/form-factor support in the OS in parallel of each other...