There's no clear answer as to which one is winning, but a few mobile executives recently provided some insight to The Information as to how developers view the mobile ecosystem. 

Tom Moss, CEO and co-founder of a service called Nextbit that helps you sync data between Android devices, said he doesn't believe Android is offering anything different that makes it more appealing than iOS. 

Moss was one of Google's earliest Android employees and helped build the business development and strategic partnership division of Android back in 2007. 

While Nokia has replaced key APIs and services, including Google's Maps and applications marketplace, with its own apps and Microsoft's services, an XDA developers forum member has posted a way to root the Nokia X so that it could run the Google launcher, Play Store and other Google apps, including Gmail and Maps.

One of the reasons why the apps work is that Nokia has apparently left the application framework untouched in order to allow apps from third-party app stores work on the phone.