Why phone software sucks and how to fix it

According to the article the problem is that the harware vendor and the software vendor is the same, and since these are big companies with no particular incentives for creating great software it ends up being mediocre. That is true.

The solution offered is splitting hardware vendors and software vendors. Unfortunately I think that if you call Nokia and tell them that they won't return your calls.

It is a classical monopoly situation, and while I agree that it would be a great soultion it is totally pie in the sky wishful thinking.

Something that is likely to change the situation to some degree is always-on connections. If you can do mobile phone web apps, that changes things around significantly. Ok, you don't get to actually access the phone, but there are still tons of 'good enough' apps to be made if people aren't worried about paying for connection time. And of course we all know about the deployment advantages of web apps.