I also think it's intended by the people actually paying for development of the phone hardware and OS. Also iOS being fully proprietary and even the open parts of Android being effectively developed by a privileged group of Google engineers with zero community input for project direction does not help...
The involved parties want to sell you cloud services(hello Google!), to have you use up mobile data & calls/SMS (hello operators! ) and ideally to throw the phone away after a year or two (hello manufacturers).
And all they need to do is build a device OS combo that needlessly peddles data via cloud somewhere on the internet, has not data card slot and can't talk directly to similar device on the table next to it...
The involved parties want to sell you cloud services(hello Google!), to have you use up mobile data & calls/SMS (hello operators! ) and ideally to throw the phone away after a year or two (hello manufacturers).
And all they need to do is build a device OS combo that needlessly peddles data via cloud somewhere on the internet, has not data card slot and can't talk directly to similar device on the table next to it...