Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge gets it in Five years after the iPhone, carriers are the biggest threat to innovation. Extremely clear and well written, too many awesome quotes.

Getting a device on a major carrier can take up to 15 months and cost millions of dollars; carriers are notorious for demanding custom devices in order to create customer lock-in. “Exclusivity is the bane of my existence,” says one source at a major phone manufacturer. “But it’s the only way business gets done.”

and

Understanding why the industry is cheating us out of innovation is great, but a look at the landscape makes it clear that it’s time for the cheating to stop.

I have been talking about this for ages, the carriers over-control, lock-in and crapware have stifled innovation in the mobile phone space in the USA, and only when they finally realize they are dumb-pipe services will service and pricing get better. Consumers know this and want this and will pay for this, but the carriers will not give up on their ridiculous monopolistic profits no matter the cost to innovation or customer satisfaction. Why? We need them, and we have no choice but to pick one monopoly from the cartel.