There are many factors. To start, many companies were already choosing to run a fork of Android in their products, like the Amazon Echo. This gives you access t

There are many factors. To start, many companies were already choosing to run a fork of Android in their products, like the Amazon Echo. This gives you access to Android's APIs, developer tools, and knowledge base, which is a significant boost in productivity. By using Android Things specifically, you also get hassle-free OTA updates directly from Google, which is essential for security. Raspbian is pretty much only supported on Raspberry Pis, so I think the worry of lock-in is worse there; and it's significant, taking into account that it's harder to go from prototype to production with a Raspberry Pi than with a SoM-based board. The UserDriver system is another factor: Android already does sensor fusion, so if your product uses, say, a GPS receiver, you can hook it up to the OS with a short amount of user-space Java code, and all existing Android code that uses the location APIs now works with your GPS. No need to modify client code nor compile anything into the OS. And your UserDriver works on any Android Things system. The talks of this year's Google I/O explain these kind of things in more detail.