Android has secured its dominant position in the smartphone market largely thanks to the level of customization the platform offers. It’s the perfect foil to Apple’s obsession with keeping the UI consistent and tightly controlled at all costs. One of the long-time advantages Android’s approach has offered is a wide assortment of great alternative keyboards. Now one keyboard developer is making a play for the iOS ecosystem by bumping off the iOS keyboard one app at a time.

Fleksy first debuted on Android a few months back as a beta app. On that platform it operates like any number of other third-party keyboards — you simply tell Android to open Fleksy in place of the stock keyboard that came with your phone. Apps like SwiftKey and Swype work the same way, but the folks behind Fleksy think they can move beyond Google’s platform by wooing iOS developers as an end run around Apple’s rules.

Apple does not allow users to replace its multitouch keyboard as the default input method, but developers are able to replace the keyboard inside their own apps. This allows software with a very specific purpose to have more suitable input options. For example, an app that helps with statistics or math can produce a different keyboard with various operators and symbols. Fleksy is hoping that app developers will see fit to integrate its keyboard with the help of an SDK.

Fleksy iOSThe main selling point of Fleksy is its almost supernatural autocorrect and word prediction. This keyboard has several different modes — including a full keyboard, compact, and completely invisible. That allows you to see more of the app’s UI on a small phone screen. The keys are still there when Fleksy is set to be invisible, but you don’t have to be exact (or even close) for Fleksy to figure out what you mean. However, if it doesn’t understand, or you’re using a lot of non-dictionary words, it can be profoundly annoying to spell things out manually with such aggressive autocorrect.

Fleksy made the SDK available to developers back in March, and has just announced that the first four apps on iOS have implemented its software — Wordbox, GV Connect, Launch Center Pro, and Blindsquare. Users of these apps have the option to go back to the Apple keyboard, but the experience of opening the app and seeing a completely foreign keyboard might be confusing. It could end up a bit of a mess with different keyboards popping up in different apps.

Apple has always said it is protecting users from a poor experience, but the company might also be worried that iDevice owners would end up preferring third-party tools and utilities to its own built-in solutions — the reality distortion field must be maintained. Apple’s policy isn’t likely to change, so Fleksy and anyone else brave or crazy enough to go after iOS will have to advance one app at a time.