However, Textrat's point remains that I remember^ that well... It also fits in with my criticism of folks knee jerk reaction to the iPhones success as a basis in the design of competing handsets.

You can not judge acceptance of all the iPhones features based on just sales numbers. Like the Razr many bought it because it was the coolest phone on the market at the time. Also like the Razr some will never use all of its features anyway.

The Razr raised the expectation of the price that North American customers were willing to pay for a phone. The Razr also raised the expectation of service providers for sales for a single model of handset.
The thing is, those North American sales came with a 2 year service contract from those providers. At the time some thought the Razor so dang cool that they paid $200 early termination fees to their existing carriers to jump ship because they didn't offer the thing. This made its cost of ownership for some even higher but it added more sales within a specific time "window", if you will.

When the honeymoon was over and the glow of excitement wore off Razr owners were left with just a phone and about 18 months left on a service providers contract.

Apple released the iPhone just about the time those first contacts expired. I suspect a bell curve graph of both Razr and iPhone sales would line up pretty closely... both sales windows opening and closing two years apart. Timing is everything.

***

IMHO, if Nokia wants to be a player in the North American Market they need to:

1. Raise some expectations.

2. Have a product ready for market when that next window of sales opens.

3. Pay no attention to analysts opinion in this market.
BTW, some of these same analysts were played by Tim Donahue when he pumped, and then dumped Nextel's stock on Sprint.