Android is struggling to keep its market share in the United States, as Apple continues to take over in the market. But, despite Android as a whole losing ground, Google Pixel phones are becoming a bigger slice of the US market.
Counterpoint Research reports that, in Q2 2023, US smartphone shipments dropped by 24% year-over-year. That includes both iPhones and Android phones, and virtually every brand saw a drop in shipments. Samsung saw US shipments drop by 37% while Motorola saw a 17% drop. TCL saw the biggest decline at just shy of 70% year-over-year, and even Apple saw a 6% drop.
Bingo.
AOSP is open source. Cool. In order to make AOSP useful to 99% of the population you need Google Play Services, which aren’t open source. To get Google Play Services you need to agree to install 20+ non-removable Google apps, none of which are open source.
Not only Google services. If you want to make a phone you need to buy SoC from Qualcomm or MediaTek and all the drivers for it are proprietary (often including Linux kernel modifications). Sure you can technically make your own but it’s impossible for 99% of phone makers.