Or will Apple, Google, etc form a US (or non-US?) company that's invested in by their foreign, profit-booking subsidiaries thus negating the tax situation?

It's hilarious that you could "launder" profits this way.

The balance of power between the telcos and most "phone manufacturers" is in favor of the telcos but for Apple and the telcos it's decidedly in Apple's favor which is why they are now all on board with no exception I'm aware of to Apple's basic demands on branding, logos and crapware.

I would argue the senior staff may not be dumb, but much of their staff is another story. For example, I was working closely with Verizon staff while they were petitioning the FTC to allow them to raise 411 rates. Their argument for the required rate increase was that they were loosing customers to things like google 411 search, so they need to raise rates to keep their service profitable.

How's that for logic? "Hmm, we now have competition for our product that is better and cheaper, oh well we better just raise our rates." Meanwhile they were very slow to make improvements to their product as a means of countering competition.