Why buy twice?
The US consumers don't buy these songs for a bunch of reasons.
1. it costs me $2.99 to buy a song from the phone co., when it's 99c on iTunes, and I already have nearly 12,000 songs in my collection already.
2. the phone T-Mobile (US) sold me, a Motorola, has a media player built in. But has no standard headphone socket, and was sold with only a 128Mb microSD card. Playing music through the built in speaker isn't exactly what I'd call "hi-fi" quality.
3. Why would I want to burn through my battery listening to music when my phone is much more important.
Bottom line, the iPhone is the only example of a decent player that's worth buying stateside, and I don't want one since I don't wish to be locked into using AT&T's notorious customer service ever again.
No the phone co's don't own the phone, but it's subsidized until you finish your contract so you still owe them for ending a contract early. And since Sprint/Nextel and Verizon phones are locked into their proprietary formats (non-GSM), what use would it be to own the phone?
No we're just not suckers for throwing money away for a 3 minute fix. Doesn't help that the phone companies have been taking consumers to the cleaners forever either.