"Android was nothing when the ball started rolling, which is when Apple used its leverage (and Cingular’s struggle at the time) to be as independent of the carrier as it could. The early success of the iPhone spooked Verizon, which put a huge amount of resources behind the Droid campaign, which is when Android really took off. This is fairly well documented. "
I disagree pretty strongly with this - I was around at the time, involved in the contracts and very close with the business folks.
This is definitely not the version of history i lived or remember :)
But honestly, it was also 2 decades ago so i don't care enough to go dig up data to refute it, so i'll drop it.