Here's a fairly prominent seller of bathroom stuff in the UK, with a wide variety of different shower fittings: http://www.bathstore.com/products/showers/shower-fittings/sh...
The hand-held shower thing is by far the norm in Germany, Italy, etc. And yeah, it's great because it's so much more usable, and really easy to replace.
What you do get in nicer showers is both a large fixed shower head and a detachable shower head.
If any of you entrepreneuring types want to make a kit and throw it up on Kickstarter, the idea is all yours.
I can't find it now, don't remember the name, but I purchased it a couple years ago from Amazon, so I should be able to get the name if you are interested with a bit more time.
Living abroad in Russia and traveling across Europe, the parent is true that handheld shower heads are by far more common. In Russian apartments at least I suspect it's because showers tend to be very small so the angle for a fixed shower head wouldn't be possible except for straight down, which is also not how most showers are installed to deal with. Again in Russia at least many building are renovated USSR built ones, and the apartments were built to last - redoing plumbing is a challenge, so it's easier to just attach a handheld shower head to the existing faucet than it is to add plumbing to concrete walls.
I live in Germany for 30+ years and I also have lived in the US for a year. I can tell you from my own experience that US-styled showerheads (ans those horrible temperature selection thingies) are virtually unheard of in Germany. Every single shower I have ever used here in Germany had a detachable shower head.