[henrikschroder]

"Wouldn't it be great if Apple ran a similarly carrier-independent iPhone store, or Nokia did the same with its smartphone lineup?"

They've done it for years, but not in the US.

http://shop.nokia.co.uk/nokia-uk/searchresults.aspx?search_i...

[henrikschroder]

Funny thing, I was just gonna check out the US Nokia website to see what it would look like without the store, and it turns out they already have one:

http://store.nokia.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/shophome_10...

[jcl]

They might as well have one; they sell more than just phones, and some of their phones (e.g. N900) have not yet been adopted as subsidized models by U.S. carriers.