This is just the return to the natural state of the licensed OS market. Samsung got all that business by using their verticals to undercut everyone by pennies and then turned those carrier deals into profits via scale and by going with more inexpensive components. Quality of low end competitors spiked and these advantages are being eaten away and maybe the carriers have an interest in Samsung not becoming too big.
> carriers have an interest in Samsung not becoming too big.
Unlikely. Carriers care about their margins. And if there are cheaper phones to sell that customers truly want, then the margins for the carriers can be higher as they can take a percentage of the price differences for themselves. Thus carriers want to have as low priced hardware as possible that still work on the high end networks and that customers want so they can sell more service subscriptions -- which is where they make their money.
It stands to reason that in the long run Samsung would get better margins if they are consistently the majority of phones sold on all carriers. All things being equal its to the carriers advantage to have a number of suppliers.
