Agreed. I cite the Daimler Benz-Chrysler Motor Company fubar as a primary example. Daimler actually had to pay out more money even after they were able to dump their portion of Chrysler to halt the bleeding. Shameful.
I think (conceptually speaking...) that Nokia was on the right track with their attempt to keep everything in house when implumenting all of the different flavors of the S60 platform at it's peak (...if there ever was such a thing). The main issue that I read was that the right hand didn't know what the left was doing. This is always a crutch for R&D in any industry!
Too big of a stretch to dismantle S40 and S60 in their current states and start from scratch? That would've been the more efficient way to go if it weren't for the amount of capital and man hours devoted toward lack-luster projects destined to crash and burn like: v3, v5, v4, Meego, Maemo, etc etc. My $0.02 based on absolutely nothing.