First of all let me start why I am writing this. I had a Nexus One for a long time already and love it (yes Gingerbread is already installed! Even before the OTA update - thanks to the cyanogenmod team). Because of my whole family using au I am using au as well. So I thought I buy the IS03 which is basically a good phone (hardware wise). BUT the software on the phone is far away from good. So I am pretty disappointed. And the problem is I can not make it faster myself. I am dependent on Sharp/KDDI. Why?

1. There is not an easy way to unlock the phone to install an own recovery or system

2. Their source is not released (not 100% sure, but I think this is the case) Of course there are reasons for doing that. Or at least Sharp/KDDI thinks there are. These reasons might be one or more of the following:

3. Security

4. Having full control over all the phones
5. Money
6. Making the system look "au" stylish But are they legitimate? I do not think so. Let us go through them.

1. Security
I refer to the Google statement [here]. Last paragraph reads:

Unfortunately, until carriers and manufacturers provide an easy method to legitimately unlock devices, there will be a natural tension between the rooting and security communities. We can only hope that carriers and manufacturers will recognize this, and not force users to choose between device openness and security. It’s possible to design unlocking techniques that protect the integrity of the mobile network, the rights of content providers, and the rights of application developers, while at the same time giving users choice. Users should demand no less.

So if you are open doesn't mean you are not secure!

2. Having full control over all the phones
So you want to make sure people only have YOUR system installed. And that they do not do anything else than what you allow them to do? Do carriers/manufacturers think this is something that will HELP them? I think it will not help them at all. Some users (that do not know other Android phones) will get mad about this. But developers or people used to Android will notice things you do not allow them to do. And this results in bad news.

But now. If you let them control what they run, is that bad? You might think yes, because they will then abuse it for WiFi tethering and so on, which you do not want them to do. At first: How many of the customers will actually unlock their phone and go through the trouble to install a new system? Most fear they can't do it or break their phone in so doing. I know a lot of developers who have a Android phones which can be easily unlocked and do not even unlock it because they do not want to go through the trouble or are okay with the phone how it is. And those who unlock it and install their own system will not use WiFi tether 24/7! They might not even use it at all! I had my Nexus One already rooted in Switzerland. I did use it for WiFi tether sometimes. But that was only in the train doing some work and surfing web pages (because it was easier from the PC to do that than from the phone). But it did not result in massive data load. But if I would not have traveled in the train so often, I would not have used WiFi Tethering at all.

So I guess there is no real reason for this point either.

3. Money
I actually do not see how that will result in more money except keeping the data load down (which it doesn't). But let me tell you how being open will lead to more money! :) Yes, you are right! Being open will help you in this area as well!

People will love your phone being open and start doing some interesting stuff. Maybe some really cool stuff that people will write about and that might come up in news papers! This is FREE ADVERTISEMENT! On the opposite. Being closed will just get some people angry which will lead to negative news which will not really help the phone to be sold and result in less money.

One way au is trying to make money is the au Market. Well. The idea itself is good. And being open won't stop you from doing that. But honestly. I do not even use the au market on my phone. The Android Market app looks a lot better! Specially with the new update! And that is not only because I still have trouble reading Kanji!

4. Making the system look "au" stylish
Actually this is the part about the IS03 that I hate the most! Everything looks different than on my Nexus One. And it is not for the better, but for the worse. I do not like the colors, I do not like the Launcher (Home). The Launcher is sooo slow! I actually replaced it with "ADW.Launcher" which is close to the original and faster! The original even would be better than the Sharp/KDDI launcher! There are some widgets that I lose through doing this, but losing that is not as painful as what I lose using their launcher!

So this as well just makes users angry and won't help you. And you invest tons of time to make it look like it is yours. And it won't help that much. And then a new android version comes out and you think: "Okay, now let us port all that to the new version. It will take some months." And there you go. Users are angry as well because they have to wait for the new update for too long! So just do not personalize it (or just very little)! It will make you have less work and the customers will be happy too! Isn't it enough for you that they use your phone and are happy with it and therefore with you?

Here as well one small thing to KDDI: The KDDI Skype application is adding one small thing, but looking a lot worse than the original Skype! I prefer the original Skype application!

And you will even gain more!
People will use their free time to develop additional/better stuff for the phone and improve it. But of course for that to work Sharp would have to release their Source Code of the base system (which they should do anyway! HTC is doing it as well.). Open source developers will take that source and create additional stuff (see cyanogenmod for example - gives you not included radio fm support and lots of other things). And now how does Sharp gain from that? Most developers (if not all) will release their work in an open source project (https://github.com/cyanogenmod <-- whole source code of cyanogenmod). And Sharp can than see how they did things and use the improvements in their updates to the regular users, which will profit from that as well.

Even Microsoft starts realizing that being open can help the company in the end. Read [here] where they allowed to have Kinect drivers being open sourced that everyone can play around with it! Here a small quote out of that article:

Microsoft also now seems to have recognised the innate potential of amateur programmers in developing new ideas for using the Kinect for gesture control and is now actively supporting them.

Wrapping it up
Dear manufacturers and carriers. Being open won't make life worse for you! It will make your life better! It will make it FUN for you to see what happens and what you can gain without doing much and by just being open!

So do yourself and your customers the favor and be open!