Note it's 2 years of feature updates not 2 years and it turns into a brick. Everything will still work and you'll still get new apps and app updates for far longer than 2 years. Security updates go for longer, too.
It is a shame Android's update story is bad, but realistically it also doesn't matter much. Non-enthusiasts tend to not even want major updates in the first place (it's a chore - especially if anything changed on them).
It sucks for app developers a lot more than it matters to the majority consumer.
Only when the hardware does not support the features.
Example: with ios7 siri was disabled for some devices. Worked just fine on jailbroken devices.
Basically for an android phone to get an update, Google, the Carrier, the Manufacturer, etc. all have to update the OS for that specific model, of which there are hundreds/thousands of models of phones.
Apple doesn't let the carriers configure the OS, and is also the manufacturer. They also have only like a dozen models. So they basically get to skip all of the parts that slow down updating your IOS version.
[0] https://www.xda-developers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/HT...
If you're not getting updates from the chip vendor, you're going to have a hard time moving to later version of Linux, for example. It would cost a lot of money to port new software to the platform, and then the question is... who's going to pay for it?
If everyone still using a Nexus 5X chips in $50 USD to fund continued development, then maybe that could continue. But it is easier at some point to just buy a new phone.
No, not really.
First comes the reality of retail pricing. The "leaving the factory door with everything amortized in" unit price of a $400 phone is likely around $250 or less. The rest of that is markup for the store, shipping, warranty returns, marketing, and a bunch else.
A good chuck of that $250 (if it is even that high), pays for the actual hardware, patent licenses, carrier testing, and a bunch of other stuff.
That doesn't leave much left to actually pay for development.
And since most consumers aren't thinking about operating system updates a couple years down the road, the lower selling price will generate more profits than long-term support will.
1. If it was really $400, the problem is most ( pretty much all apart from Apple ) gives plenty of Retail margin and incentive to carriers. That means on average it is highly likely not even getting $250 out of it.
It is like those Flagship Samsung and Huawei phone, their pricing strategy is always $100 lower than comparative official iPhone price, except they are often retailing for 20% lower. Compared to Apple, you could hardly find any decent discount on iPhone, and iPhone has much lower margin for Carrier and Retail, from low end of 10s to even single digit percentage.
2. Only if it is sold for 100 millions unit +. And Google didn't even manage 10. You need Scale for it to work. That is why iPhone is unprecedented, when was the last time you saw a product in its segment taking 20% of shipment and 80-90% of industry profits?
The answer often to all these question is simple, paid up, and find enough people to paid up, in business terms this means market fit. Unfortunately apart from small bunch of people on HN, no one is willing to paid extra $50 - $100 more just for Software update, they expect it to be free, or they would rather not update at all.
Samsung for example is still updating 4 year old note devices.