The iPhone does not live in such a market. It has no competition. It is a qualitatively different product from other mobile phones. The cell phone market is divided into two categories: the iPhone, and inferior crud. If Apple were to begin charging $0.05 per "click", you would have to cough up the dough or switch to a vastly inferior product. Therefore, your ability to "vote" with your money is academic in this case.

I suspect that this is the reason why Apple users complain about (even potential!) misfeatures to the extent they do. In the product categories where Apple is a player, from the standpoint of a dedicated Apple user, they have zero competition. All of the supposedly competing products are far below the quality-of-user-experience Apple users are accustomed to. Hence the perception that there is nowhere to run to.

Given how everything else you've said hinges on this assumption, you'd have done well to explain why you think it is true. Like I said before, you're conflating two markets.

As it depends on all players in a highly competitive market suddenly colluding to degrade the user experience upon which they all depend without anyone realizing that they might stand to make more money by not doing so, I find it hard to believe.

Try this on for size:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/11/apple-brings-hdcp-...

I know it may be hard to believe, but we're just talking about cellphones here; I'm sure Apple is aware of the fact that doing something like that would be suicide in a very competitive market.