I'm sure 100% of any revenue going to Apple and not shared with anyone had nothing to do with that.
A less generous take on that would be that he/Apple also wanted to push their app store. At the time Flash was popular for publishing apps and games on the web. Yes their decision helped move everyone away from Flash but it also meant they would be getting their 30% cut from iOS apps.
Edit: I stand corrected. "While originally developing iPhone prior to its unveiling in 2007, Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs did not intend to let third-party developers build native apps for iOS, instead directing them to make web applications for the Safari web browser." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(iOS)#iOS_SDK
The App Store didn't exist at that time.
Apple did it because they could, because when the iPhone came out it owned the smartphone market; any carrier that didn't play ball would be frozen out (as T-Mobile was initially - AT&T's exclusivity on the iPhone really helped their market share among high-end consumers). Google did not have that luxury.
When Apple/Steve Jobs went into negotiations with Verizon and AT&T (then known as Cingular), it didn’t have any leverage. In fact, Verizon wouldn’t sign the deal in part because of the control Steve Jobs wanted over the devices. AT&T agreed to get the exclusive.
BlackBerry was King when the iPhone launched and BlackBerry bent over backwards to do whatever the carrier wanted (the book Losing the Signal has great details on this).
Google could have depended on similar provisions with Verizon when the Droid launched in 2009 or with T-Mobile when the G1 launched in 2008. Both carriers wanted an iPhone killer.
But Google didn’t do that. It did force Verizon not to put Bing as the default search engine on some of Verizon’s Android phones (like the Droid series), despite an early 2009 agreement Verizon made to make Bing its default search engine — and it also negotiated to NOT force consumers to pay for Android apps using the carrier stores (something many carriers had required for previous non-Apple App Stores), once paid apps launched.
But it didn’t negotiate the update bit, even though the company had the leverage to do it.
I can only speculate the reasons why, but based on the number of books I’ve read, people I’ve talked to, and and other information, it strikes me that Google decided it was more advantageous to let any phone maker or carrier adopt its OS to gain marketshare, rather than worrying about device fragmentation or security update issues.
And that strategy worked beautifully and Android took over the world. The problem is getting carriers or device makers to update, especially when many have spent lots of time customizing Android as a way of differentiating themselves.
But it’s unfair to claim Google didn’t have the opportunity to make the deal Apple did. Google just didn’t want to do that and wasn’t willing to walk away from a partnership to have that level of control.
The big draw for Android for OEMs was that unlike Windows Mobile or Symbian, there was no licensing fee for the devices. HTC, which made the first Android phone, was a Windows Mobile device maker (fun fact, the XDA from XDA Developers, was an OG Windows Mobile forum — XDA was the name of an early series of Windows Mobile devices) — Samsung and LG and Motorola made Windows Mobile phones, Sony used Symbian and so on. Android was free and customizable, which made it enticing for OEMs and carriers to embrace. And unlike BlackBerry, carriers didn’t have to give a portion of the data charge (which was like $20 or $40 a month per BlackBerry device) to BlackBerry, they got to keep all the data fees to themselves.
Without the app store and the google ecosystem, android experience is poor at best.
Try this: On Google's Appstore, find a flashlight app that doesn't upload your contacts. Now on F-droid, try to find one that does. This is not an easy challenge!
Even if you have a completely “open” operating system on your phone, your communications is still going through a carrier that could be “operated by the NSA”.
I take your point but android is similar in some respects (Google probably has less interest in your privacy than Apple does).
Never again for a Samsung device, they churn through models absurdly quickly, delay updates for months, and shovel tons of crap on.
Exactly. There is a whole series of phones offering bloat-less Android, from a variety of manufacturers: