1) Hardware companies have to employ the waterfall model. Agile is not even a word in their vocabulary. This is because once a product is on the shelves or in the customers' hands, it is infinitely more expensive to recall and fix products. When all you have is the waterfall hammer, everything looks like a nail.

2) Culture plays a huge part. Senior management "knows best" despite your best efforts to convince them otherwise.

My boss once described it as "a huge ship that sails down the river. Once the ship is on its way, it is really hard to change direction or stop it".

Although telecommunications always had a very close relationship with the software industry, they see the customers in a different way.

Since the early days they would rather ship new phones than offer upgrades. Nokia was probably the only exception, in the models that weren't tainted with mobile operator firmware.

It only works for Apple, because they managed to get those guys out of the way. But they got their lesson and surely will not let others get away with it.

BRB, raging out