The iPhone brought a bit of the outside world to the US telco market. This was only a matter of time, as the market becomes more globalized there is increasing competition in the consumer market, and carrier bound phones are less flexible and more expensive in the long run. Everybody knows this.

(I believe that even the US broadband market sooner or later will transformed in much the same way. For a long time it looked like Google was about to do it, but with that seemingly stalled for the time being we might have to wait a few more years.)

It is not reasonable to describe the iPhone as changing how phones were sold outside of a select few countries. Therefore we should not accept that explanation as to why Android phones do not receieve updates either. Those markets are small on a global scale, especially for Android which clearly dominates the lower end of the market, which is predominantly deregulated.