Comment by bregma
2 years ago
Most of it was because of the channels. People buy a phone from their carrier. They don't buy from an OS manufacturer. They don't even buy from a phone manufacturer. They get a plan and it comes with a phone. Carriers only distribute phones from a few proven vendors, and that decision involves a lot of games of golf and karaoke nights on company tabs.
Turns out the phone cartel is the phone company cartel in a trench coat.
Before either iOS or Android existed, you could get phones running Windows CE from carriers. Why didn't that stick around? Especially since those primitive smartphones gave carriers a lot more control over their app stores.