If you have the money/competence/manpower, there's more upside in selling phones in the current market. And if you're making phones, the carriers would really rather you not dip your toes in data-first devices that might accelerate their dumb-pipe destiny.
Which leaves the devices we see as sadly inevitable.
Minus someone with the power/resources of, say, Amazon or Microsoft, doing it carriers-be-damned.
Though I'm still not sure why Apple is so slow to this party. A $300 "iPod Touch With SIM slot" sounds like a great product for an awful lot of overseas markets. (Where a considerable amount of their sales and growth are.) Though maybe that's where the 5C experiment is going.
Which leaves the devices we see as sadly inevitable.
Minus someone with the power/resources of, say, Amazon or Microsoft, doing it carriers-be-damned.
Though I'm still not sure why Apple is so slow to this party. A $300 "iPod Touch With SIM slot" sounds like a great product for an awful lot of overseas markets. (Where a considerable amount of their sales and growth are.) Though maybe that's where the 5C experiment is going.