How ATT determines what your Android phone will be like

Engadget has a revealing piece on how "product managers" working for AT&T. These "product" people determine not only which smartphones the company will promote at their stores, but how those devices will look, operate and function:

It begins with the creation of a formal document that lists the various traits and features AT&T desires. Since it takes so long to crank out a phone, the company needs to predict what the market's going to look like over a year in advance. This means our friends [ATT product managers] Dante and Chris have to ask themselves a few questions to hone their forecasting skills. What will be considered state of the art by then? How can we offer a truly groundbreaking product at that time? What will be on the low-end? What are customers going to want their phones to do? Answering these questions isn't easy, which is why AT&T has an advanced planning group that looks into all of the chipsets, displays and other components on the horizon.

The length of time a phone takes from conception to launch depends on a few factors: if the project was initiated by AT&T and the OEM needs extra time to work all of the crucial conceptual stuff, there are loads of extra vetting, testing and refining that needs to take place before the final product is ready. 

This probably helps explain why so many Android devices are so exactly like one another -- and why there is so much bloatware and non-personalization in these devices.

But I think it also portends how Google, which controls Android and which will soon own smartphone maker Motorola, will become still more closely aligned with carriers.

And no, not for the benefit of the users.