I totally agree with the points that Larry Garfield made in his editorial on infoSync World called Picking the carrier lock. According to Garfield:

A larger problem comes with phone lock-down, that is, application locking. Many carriers tightly regulate what applications a user can install on a phone. Their claim is that they have to in order to protect their network. That, too, is asinine. A well-designed network just offers a common carrier data channel, just as virtually all landline ISPs do. If wireless carriers are concerned about their radio integrity, then the answer is to address the problem directly and make the phone not able to go over-power or to improper frequencies, not to effectively block any applications they don't happen to like.

If it wasn't clear from the article I published last week about the difficulty finding a smartphone for my wife that's compatible with an aftermarket application that she needs for work, I would have a real problem if a carrier tried to limit the applications that I could install on a Treo 600 or a similarly sophisticated smartphone. What happens if one of the two surviving GSM carriers in the USA says that they want to stop people from installing PalmOS applications that the carrier has not certified? Where does that leave people who need sophisticated applications like ePocrates that no one outside of medicine will ever need?

This prospect truly worries me, because I can already see U.S. carriers shying away from certifying handsets to which they do not have exclusive distribution rights. The only reason that the Treo 600 is available from every major U.S. mobile carrier is because demand for this smartphone is so great. This is not going to be the case for most handsets-- particularly ground-breaking designs.

In a perfect world, handsets would not be subsidized. People would buy what they need-- from the simplest handset designed for primarily for voice, to the most sophisticated integrated communication tools-- and pay a reasonable price for it. This may be impractical for the consumer-oriented market, but I think it could still work for smartphones.

Carriers need to realize that there will be a backlash if customers at the high end detect that their smartphone application choices are being limited in an unreasonable way. Vertical market applications, RSS readers, more sophisticated Internet browsers, and system administration remote control tools, to name a few, must be permitted. Otherwise, these customers will shift even more of their attention to technologies like WiFi and WiMax.