It must be a pain being Nokia, because you only have a handful of very very powerful customers. For example if the 3 or 5 largest phone companies don’t buy your phone then you don’t sell any. Which means you just build exactly what they tell you to build.

Meanwhile your technologist are telling you that Open Source, open platforms, and the end to end principle are not just cool, but so powerful that any business that tries to control the edge is toast.

What to do? Handspring tried a few different things. In the end they caved and now thier products are carefully obedient to the demands of the phone companies.

The Nokia 770 looks like an attempt an answer, an attempt to route around the damage.

It makes me wonder if bluetooth is the hole in the armor of the cell phone companies.