It should be fairly easy to "buy them out". Pick out the ones that do the most work and/or the work relevant to what you need done, and shoot them a letter with an NDA/check that offers them a contracting gig to get CM up and running on a device before launch.
They of course could keep on working on CM in general, and do contracting for other people as well, but at least your phone would have CM support out of the box.
I imagine the CM people could organize a bit to facilitate such contracting, but I suspect the reason this hasn't already been happening is that there just isn't really any demand from the manufacturers. I can't really say I know anything about the industry at all though, so I might just be talking crap.
They of course could keep on working on CM in general, and do contracting for other people as well, but at least your phone would have CM support out of the box.
I imagine the CM people could organize a bit to facilitate such contracting, but I suspect the reason this hasn't already been happening is that there just isn't really any demand from the manufacturers. I can't really say I know anything about the industry at all though, so I might just be talking crap.