My bet that Apple will provide something similar in the future. It's just too good. All that sharing stuff in Android, i really miss it on my iPad, it's imo the biggest feature difference between those two OS today.
It's great news (especially in regards to Nitro-ed UIWebVIew), but still it's short of what intents are able to do. For example, I don't suppose it would be possible to "announce" to the system that I, for example, do "image editing" by getting a "png, jpg, pdf" and returning a "png, jpg, pdf". XPC would mostly be used in a single app for further sandboxing and increased security/stability.
I don't have any inside information on how Apple will do things in iOS, but I see no reason why they couldn't do that.
"Services" have been part of iOS/OS X since the late 80s/early 90s with NeXTStep, the precursor to both.
I don't think Apple is deliberately not allowing services/intents in the manner you describe, I think it's just taking them a long time to figure out how to do it within the process and security model they are trying to enforce in iOS.
My bet that Apple will provide something similar in the future. It's just too good. All that sharing stuff in Android, i really miss it on my iPad, it's imo the biggest feature difference between those two OS today.