"""Some theories suggested that Microsoft didn't want to antagonize its carrier customers by bundling Skype so closely with the handset."""
The Carriers have been antagonized a lot already; Elop during his tenure at Nokia fired many sales staff and forced others to leave, replacing the most competent and experienced carrier relations management experts with the bullies from Microsoft.
The issue with carrier relations and retail got so bad, that every time there was a credit ratings downgrade of Nokia, the bad relationship with the carried was always cited as the reason by the rating agencies.
"Skype is coming no matter what, but maybe we can do something creative that generates incremental revenue for you"
Skype is an existential threat to the telecoms carrier community. Not a profitability threat like BBM or Whatsapp.
A completely Skype-integrated platform destroys the carriers' profit without generating any money whatsoever for neither MS or the carriers.
Skype never made any money all by itself, it only got cash from investors, the amount of people that bought Skype calls was minimal compared to the total user-base, but in exchange it killed both international calls and video-conferencing markets.
The telecoms industry is 4 times as large as the computer industry, it is of the few very large industries that is experiencing good growth everywhere.
Does anybody think the carriers will tolerate without a bloody fight that MS destroys their industry for the sake of selling handsets to further cement their Server/Desktop monopoly in business?
We live in interesting times.
But one thing is certain, MS growth is always at the expense (Destruction) of somebody else, the lack of room in the IT market to grow, and its voracity is leading MS to spread everywhere, and at some point somebody is going to say enough is enough.