This is an interesting post for a number of reasons...
The costs for software development on an individual handset/device is what is keeping handset costs high. The 10-20B yen cost estimate for a Japanese handset (USD is $8M to $19M) is a bit low, considering the feature set that the typical JP keitai has... remember that this is development costs, not life-cycle cost through the production life-cycle of the device.
NTT DoCoMO is going down a similar path, and has crossed up with both Linux (with some positive results) as well as Symbian (with some conflict). But their intent with FOMA devices is roughly parallel with KDDI's...
Getting back to the cost issue, in the JP market, the delta between low and high tier handsets is $9M USD, and a Japanese low-tier handset is much more than what you would see in the US market.
Looking at things though, the HW is the same for the most part, considering that 6100 is the absolute low-end, and 6500 is the high-end, the HW development hit cannot be that much, so most of it is software and aux items (better camera for example, or more memory, etc). You also have to fold in other NRE, such as Software/Hardware QA and testing, along with the additional industry related tests...
Handset development NRE is still too high at this point... even before the device is launched.
I'll post more later...
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