In NL, and AFAIK in EU -where Nokia has a big market penetration of what is it, 60%?- it is very normal to sell cellphones (and smartphones) together with a 1 or 2 year contract. Cheaper cellphones are also sold pre-pay. In Greece this is illegal to sell together, and the iPhone for example must (by law) also be sold seperately in Germany. However, it then costs like 1000 EUR.

Also, the Nokia E71 has alreasy a follow-up. I own an E71 and I love it, but the follow-up also fixes some issues I have with my E71. Such as a slightly better keyboard layout. We're also seeing slide-out keyboards. Don't forget some applications are heavily focussed on keypad usage interaction. To use these on your E71 you need to use a shortcut (shift+number) on small keys while on 99% of phones you just press numbers on a bigger keypad.