The blogosphere devoured news of the iPhone and now comes the inevitable indigestion. Among the various gripes about price, carrier 
exclusivity, a non-removable battery, lack of 3G support, and the inability to download or sync wirelessly, to name a few, it is the iPhone’s closed system that may be the device’s most controversial feature or flaw, depending on your perspective. Apple proclaimed that it had "reinvented the phone with the iPhone," but as blogger and former telecommunications executive Tom Evslin pointed out in his blog, Apple failed to reinvent the phone business.
Asked about that observation, Tim Bajarin, president of consulting firm Creative Strategies, Inc., agreed with Evslin’s lament. "That’s because all of us hate the phone business," he said. "One of the things that a lot of us had hoped was that Apple was going to reinvent the phone business by becoming an MVNO [Mobile Virtual Network Operator], as opposed to working directly with a carrier and being stuck with a carrier’s rigid rules."
The Apple iPhone will not allow users to install their own software. It is a closed system, or so it appears at this point. Apple declined to elaborate on whether third-party developers might be able to petition Apple to get their software onto the iPhone. That means users will be unable to do things like install Skype for cheaper calling. Is A Closed iPhone Doomed To Fail? - News by InformationWeek