The 7 Powers Known to Tesla, Pixar, Netflix, Apple, and Twilio

I think that’s probably true in the US, but less so in Europe, then Nokia’s main market. In the EU it wouldn’t have been up to the networks at all; bring your own device was and is quite common and networks are required to allow it. Nokia did produce a number of very premium smartphones (more expensive than the first iPhone, even!); they were just never all that consumer-friendly (though they made a few attempts).

I was a major customer of Twilio, among several other similar providers. Maybe if you've built a big interactive something, switching costs were high, but for what we were using them for, it wouldn't take much to switch to a new provider. Twilio's apis are nice, but most others are at least OK, and it's hard to screw up an SMS api (although GSMA has a soap standard that's pretty terrible, wouldn't have used that except that it came with some no cost messaging deals).

That said their strategy of“There is only one true strategy, build products and services for which your customers will pay you.” works, cause their service works to get calls and texts to most of the world, most of the time. If you don't do that, or the price is too high, it's easy to leave.