(Update: Samsung response) Samsung's withholding of Android 2.2 upgrades in the US may be due to an attempt to extract what amounts to an "upgrade toll" on carriers, a purported insider leaked this weekend. Unlike HTC and Motorola, Samsung considers new Android revisions major and demands that carriers pay a fee per device to get a feature upgrade. US carriers have reportedly disagreed and effectively triggered a stand-off, refusing to pay for an OS update that costs Samsung almost nothing and which others deliver for free.
"They [at Samsung] are essentially charging for the Android Open Source Project�s efforts, and the effort on Samsung�s end is rather minimal," the XDA-Developers insider said. "As a result of perhaps, corporate collusion, [sic] all U.S. carriers have decided to refuse to pay for the Android 2.2 update, in hopes that the devaluation of the Galaxy S line will cause Samsung to drop [its] fees and give the update to the carriers. The situation has panned out differently in other parts of the world, but this is the situation in the United States."
The move would help explain the few updates that have arrived, most of which have been pure maintenance updates touching on outstanding bugs. Many, including those who filed the recent class action lawsuit over the updates, have complained that the updates still didn't fix a major flaw with GPS that might only have been addressed in Android 2.2.
Neither Google nor Samsung have commented on the accusations.
If authentic, the allegations would help explain Samsung's historically very slow updates and would add a commercial side to Android fragmentation that has still kept a large number of users on 2.1. With few exceptions, Samsung has rarely provided more than one major OS revision for its Android phones and in some cases none at all. HTC, Motorola and even rivals such as Apple have been much quicker on average and in many cases have added new features even with no immediate commercial incentive.
An insistence by Samsung on payouts for updates could make it too costly to upgrade a device multiple times. It might also explain why there has been a rush on minor Galaxy S variants like the Continuum, Nexus S and Vibrant 4G, since it gets newer Android revisions to users through new products rather than updates that cost carriers money but don't contribute to their sales.
Update: Samsung claimed in a brief statement that it wasn't charging carriers for updates and hoped to have more information soon.
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