The thing about the American market is that expensive phones become relatively cheaper compared with cheap phones, and people have their phones longer. This is good because it drives development of high end devices and software, but ultimately bad for 90% of the users who don't care, they just want a cheap but good phone. In effect high end devices are subsidized by low end devices.

In Europe there is a much faster turn-around of phones, typically 1 year. This will drive hardware development at a faster rate, and will also enable manufacturers to produce cheaper phones (price per unit) because they produce much more units.

The one who will succeed in both "worlds" is Google. Android now runs equally well on 1€ (150-200€ total per year) devices in Europe (Samsung, SE), as it does on "high end" devices.

So, the point is that as of summer 2010, there is no such thing as high end device. Android, SE and Samsung has totally changed the face of the mobile marked. There is nothing you can do with a €400-500 device that you can't do with a €1 (150€) device. This has happened literally within the months of June and July. How Nokia (or anyone not running Android) is going to compete with this, is becoming an increasingly larger mystery as HW and production facilities of cheap Android devices is continuously optimized. Nokia better start getting those Symbian^3/4 devices out, or they will die. The next who will loose most of its market share, at least outside US, is Apple and RIM.