Apple can incentivise updates much better because they control the whole ecosystem. To achieve this, Google would need to somehow _force_ OEMs to update Android, but the fragmentation makes this a herculean task.
It's one of those old early Android mistakes that were never really fixed. I think the root issue is that they were never even fully acknowledged.
I wrote about this here:
https://dev.to/jmfayard/android-s-billion-dollar-mistake-327...
More fragmented than Android. Continuous updates even for hardware from the year 2000 (a few paid along the way).
"This is why I never want to get new phones or computers" was muttered probably about 15 times in the two hours I was helping her salvage content from the older device.
I believe it is hardware vendors that don't want to support update. It is a lot of works (costs) for them with little and no return. It might even be negative returns since a phone with updated OS might delay that user purchase a new phone every 1-2 years.
The release of Android (5.x) was obsolute at initial product release.
There has been no update. There is no update path. The device is locked down to the point that I have been unable to root or re-ROM it.
I'd been under the impression at purchase time that 1) OEM updates would be provided, 2) rooting was possible, and 3) re-ROMing was an option. All three beliefs proved false.
Samsung are directly to blame.
But Google can fix this. Google haven't. Google aren't.
Google can pleasure itself.