Smart phones followed a very different path of evolution that was heavily influenced by cell carriers. Apple had to fight really hard to get the iPhone carried,

Smart phones followed a very different path of evolution that was heavily influenced by cell carriers. Apple had to fight really hard to get the iPhone carried, and to do that they had to lock it down to comply with what I am sure were a long laundry list of carrier demands. This was the era of flip phones when carriers had full control. They really didn't want to lose that control. I doubt a company smaller and less influential than Apple could possibly have gotten a full-fledge computer of any kind onto cell networks. This led the entire mobile ecosystem down a path where the device is locked down by design even though today carriers are less able to influence that. Add to that the emergence of surveillance-driven advertising as a way to monetize "free." It's very hard to compete with free (or subsidized) products. Most people compare price vs feature set, not privacy or security. So there was a huge economic incentive to turn phones into little surveillance devices to siphon up data to be used to drive advertising. Without surveillance capitalism most apps would cost money and phones would probably cost a lot more.