Us North Americans prefer luxury, ease of use and trendiness and we don't mind paying for it. Yes, we sometimes love to be spoonfed by the media and just go with the hype. It is our way of life. This mentality lets new and cool products to emerge. We are busy and don't have time to spend on hours of configuration. That's why the iPhone is a HUGE hit here. You just unbox it and there you go - works as expected from day 1.

The Nokia (aka European way) is basically the opposite. Over the holidays I saw some people in Europe still using 5190s.

IMO Nokia will not be able to crack the NA market even if they wanted to. People here have the following association: Nokia=cheap prepaid phones. It's like FIAT. Regardless how cool new vehicles they'd make people still call them Fix-It-Again-Tony. Associations like these are powerful.