SmartPhones are hot – so hot that everyone wants one, but cannot find one. And for wireless phone companies, that actually might be a good thing. Why? Well the editors of America’s Network magazine have an interesting theory – the High Cost of Support Calls.

bq. Intuwave, a U.K.-based company that has looked at the costs of customer support found that customer service calls from smart phone users last roughly four times longer (25 minutes) than the six-minute calls from users of more traditional handsets. Using a weighted cost of $2 per minute, each smart phone costs $100 per year. The cost to a carrier (such as Orange) having only 20,000 smart phones is in the neighborhood of $2 million.

What happens when there are 10 million smartphones by 2007, as predicted by The Probe Group. But if there are no handsets on the market, then well those costs can be avoided.