Open source is different in that anyone peeved about some missing or unfriendly feature can implement it. You do not need to become an official committer; just put your patch on the mailing list and it is likely to be picked up and integrated.

Open source is different in that people generally strive to build the best software they can; there is no management saying "This is good enough; we're not going to bother with feature/problem X", or worse, as in this case, "there is no problem X".

But in the end, the users pay for the phones. If they don't buy the phones, no money for carrier and manufacturer.

Case in point: The Motorola Droid (Android 2.0) has multitouch in Europe (where it is called Milestone), but apparently not in the US.