What is your expectation for the relationship between a manufacturer and carriers? The carriers are their customers. If they want to stay in business, they have to make their customers happy, like any other industry. The idea that they are going to put their foot down and strong-arm the carriers is not a realistic one. I take that comment to mean Jolla wants to stay in business.

This is the American mindset.

They are targeting Europe and mostly Asia at the moment. Living in India, I know for a fact that most people don't buy smartphones locked into carriers.

We do have conracts tied with devices, but the market for them is very small in the case of smartphones.

It just doesn't make sense to commit for so long to a particular telecom company, because here, carriers compete a lot and people do want flexibility to switch from one carrier to another.

So no, I don't think jolla is at the mercy of carriers.

Buying a phone that you don't have complete control over is seen as stupid.

Hopefully they take and stick to a stand that preinstalled carrier bloatware should be able to be uninstalled very easily and disallow always running services like on WP.

This is a happy medium between the hardline no-preinstalled-carrier-apps of iOS and the anything-goes Android phones.

Jolla has no clout. They can't take a stand on anything. The best they can do is build it into the system that all apps can be uninstalled and hope no one at the carrier brings it up.