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I am not a programmer but in theory it would be well possible to exchange a library in a firmware. I can give you a specific example:
A hardware mediaplayer (sold amongst others by Freecom) had/has a firmware which consist of open source libraries, hardware drivers (not sure whether they were open or closed source, nobody messed around with them), a single piece of closed source software (the player) plus quite a few scripts, graphics files and some such.
After experimenting around people managed to take apart the firmware into the above mentioned parts (as already stated, I'm not a programmer, but from following that thread for over a year I assume that there are only so many ways to pack stuff into a firmware file and people who work in that field are certain to get to the point sooner or later where they can take it apart).
Once the files were available there was a number of uses which the various people found:
1) one of the simplest was to change the graphics (to something prettier, or in another language -> as the buttons were all just graphics)
2) change the scripts to modify the behaviour of the system
3) include additional libraries called from modifies parts of the script (they managed to include an ftp and telnet server that way so you could remote control the system via telnet)
4) exchange libraries for less buggy ones or maybe just smaller ones to speed things up or make room for other stuff
So, basically, there IS practical use for dynamically linked libraries, at least in theory, because you never know when it will be possible to change stuff.
A customer service nightmare would be out of the question as usually every vendor clearly states somewhere in all that legalese that if you tamper with the device (both hardware and software) the warranty is null and void and no court on earth would rule that the manufacturer could be held responsible if some idiot bricked their device by re-flashing or suffered some other mis-behaviour from some altered firmware.
Of course, one shouldn't be so naive as to assume that there aren't those who brick their device and still try to get the manufacturer to do something about it. Whether the company will be very strict or not will probably also depend on their sales: If a device sells extremely well because people know that you can customize your firmware, exchange graphics and such, the company could possibly be rather lenient because they also benefit from their customers work through increased sales...
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