The US market is large, but it hardly defines what goes on around the world. Look at Nokia for instance.

Android is also not a handset, but a platform to run on many handsets in the future. It would be highly short-sighted for the various carriers not to offer one phone or another running on Android as they are developed.

In Canada (at least) BlackBerry products and service are available with all three of the major carriers.

I fully believe that the efforts of carriers to self-brand the phone products is going to hurt the product's market share and in the end may even hurt the carrier. It's so prevalent, but it's yet another telecom practice I despise. If Apple's exclusivity contract with ATT was over you can bet the other carriers would be jumping to get the iPhone on their networks (those with GSM and UTMS anyway).

I'd like to see iPhone's carrier exclusivity go away, but I don't ever want to see an iPhone support other telecom standards like CDMA/CDMA2000 or whatever other else is being peddled today by those outside the GSM association. We need the remaining US carriers to get into step by standardizing on what the majority of the world has long ago decided is the best path. This shouldn't be as difficult as adopting the Metric system.

There's no doubt about whether the iPhone and its current subsidization brings Apple huge revenues, but it would be nice to see a contract and lock-free version at a palatable consumer price point for use on any carrier with the infrastructure to support it. Just sell the things like iPods. I don't think any other phone would stand a chance.