KDDI ties in partners for new phone OS: "The aim is supposed to be to cut the cost of designing new handsets, although initially at least, it is likely to increase costs, and what this seems to be really about is gaining control over handset designs by one of the major Japanese operators."

Nice. I can only hope that they manage to replicate the success of the au Design team in building customised handset exteriors... though writing a new cellphone OS from scratch seems to be a fairly long-winded way around things,