The difference there is it likely builds on the work they did for the Steam Deck and SteamOS. Writing a full Steam client for iOS or Android would be a huge amount of work independently from that.
It looks like they ran Linux apps inside a virtual machine on an Android phone. That has been possible for a long time now. That is certainly a route Valve could go down, but it won’t be a very good user experience.
Steamworks SDK supports Android now. Obviously, should there be an official full Steam client for Android, the preferred route is for game developers to release native Android games with Steam integration.
The difference there is it likely builds on the work they did for the Steam Deck and SteamOS. Writing a full Steam client for iOS or Android would be a huge amount of work independently from that.
https://www.androidauthority.com/run-desktop-linux-apps-on-android-how-to-3586539/
It looks like they ran Linux apps inside a virtual machine on an Android phone. That has been possible for a long time now. That is certainly a route Valve could go down, but it won’t be a very good user experience.
Steamworks SDK supports Android now. Obviously, should there be an official full Steam client for Android, the preferred route is for game developers to release native Android games with Steam integration.