Unlocked Cell Phones As Anachronistic As The Five Inch Floppy Disk?

Will the day ever come when unlocked cell phones are as anachronistic as the five-inch floppy disk?  Industry trends don’t seem to suggest such a time for the foreseeable future.  Everyone is still interest in locking in their customers by locking out those who leave.  They argue that such moves are entirely kosher because it was they who subsidized the cost of the phone in the first place, but such a line of reasoning doesn’t make too much sense in the case of a customer who honored his or her original contract and now simply wants out.  Such a customer’s business has already, by the service provider’s own prior calculations, made back the money on the phone itself by then!