Lovely so its true about Samsung they only worry about people locked into a carrier contract.
I had HTC droid phones on a contract and never received an update to OS in 2 years. Now your saying that unlocked / unbranded S3 will never be updated *sigh* I really thought Samsung was a different more customer focused company. I read another post in another forum that stated basically the same that only locked phones will be updated, but I was waiting to see if others could confirm this, seems now it is correct.
At least Apple / Nokia do update their phones, guess its a better option for me than staying with Android.
No wonder Android is such a patch work quilt OS as you never know what updates if any you will ever get.