There are too many cooks in the mobile space to spoil the fun for the developers:
- the carriers, hardware manufacturers and OS developers put application locks forcing developers to bear huge certification cost for each release
- the Web site that sells software charges a hefty fee for hosting the applications
Then there are cool apps like Skype and SlingBox etc, which run into different kind of restrictions.
Carriers think that by giving you the handset for cheap, they own the handset and its operations, and like to control everything that touches it.
I agree they need to sit down and talk about it, and loosen up a bit.