In 2013, the keys to Android are still held by the carriers
This year's flagships, the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, are locked down — Just under two years ago, HTC's CEO responded to public pressure by making an equally public promise: “We will no longer be locking the bootloaders on our devices.”
Context & Ripple Effects
The bootloader fight has a paper trail: Motorola publicly apologized and promised a better policy back in January 2011, and by mid-2011 commentators were arguing Google had to confront what they called the mobile 'protection racket' of carrier control. HTC's CEO then made his own public pledge to stop locking bootloaders — which is why this year's locked-down HTC One stings more than usual.
The immediate trigger is concrete: the HTC One reached AT&T and Sprint in April 2013 while its Developer Edition slipped past launch, leaving buyers of the carrier versions without an official unlock path at release. With Samsung's Galaxy S4 similarly locked down on US carriers, both of 2013's flagship Android phones arrive under the same restrictions that the 2011 promises were supposed to end.
First-order effects
- HTC is caught between its 2011 no-locked-bootloaders pledge and carrier reality — the delayed Developer Edition means early US buyers of the One get a locked device with no sanctioned alternative.
- Developers and modders who bought the HTC One or Galaxy S4 from AT&T or Sprint face restricted devices at launch, pushing custom-ROM work toward workarounds rather than official channels.
Second-order effects
- Samsung and HTC are competing for carrier shelf space and subsidies, so neither can risk being the one OEM that ships an unlocked flagship — the carrier relationship, not the 2011 pledges, sets the default.
- Google's claim that Android is the open platform comes under pressure precisely where its partners are strongest: if the top two OEMs can't deliver open bootloaders, the openness argument shifts to Nexus-class hardware alone.
Third-order effects
- If carrier lock-in keeps overriding OEM promises across successive flagship cycles, expect Google to assert more direct control over how Android presents itself on devices — brand mandates, tighter partner requirements — as the counterweight to carrier power.
- The pattern points toward a two-tier Android: subsidized carrier hardware optimized for operator requirements versus developer-oriented devices sold at a premium, formalizing the split the 2011 apologies only gestured at.
The trend: Android's openness is being decided less by Google's code than by US carrier distribution leverage, forcing OEMs to trade their unlock pledges for shelf space.