Are you being sarcastic?

Problem here is that as stated, phones are generally not sold off-contract in America and Nokia dont have strong carrier relationship, so its natural for some writers to assume that it wont be carrier supported.

But this is a new class of device and even having a passing interest in the mobile market, seeing that it has Tmobile 3G frequencies should peak your interest. Tmobile doesnt have a strong presence in the US and their 3G network is immature, if Nokia wanted to get this device into as many hands as possible, in an unsubsidised form, you be would foolish not to allow it to work on the market leaders network. Nokia are normally quite open about forthcoming support for frequencies, with the N900, they are being very cagey about supporting 850, 900 and 1900. You will notice that all the other new Nokias support 900 and 1900 and i fully expect it to be picked up by Tmobile before xmas as part of their plans to gain market share with Nokia on board, amongst others, namely Android.

The N900 wont sell like hotcakes and it wont be an enterprise device yet, its an N-Series dont forget. Im not certain Tmobile will pick it up but if Nokia wants a foot-hold in this market as it seems it does they are going to do it at the right time. Nokia have branched out with the E71x, which is crippled and is doing reasonably well for a non touch devices but goes against Nokias ethos of selling uncrippled phones but did so to gain mind share and put the name out there with carrier support. Doing it with the E71 wasnt such a loss to Nokia as say the N97, i feel they were hoping the N97 would be more of a hit in the US and get picked up but missed the mark with several points which has led to bad press in the US. But this was the first step and only a hiccup in the grand scheme, you cant knock em out the park all the time.

Its true they need to promote their phones more but at the right time, theres no point in buying tv ads now, S60 5th and Meamo isnt ready for the American consumer yet as proved by the N97 and carriers are reluctant to support a device which doesnt appeal.

Timing is everything and as their plan to move to Symbain ^2 and Qt comes along, so will developers and technology. Exposing Maemo to this market now is correct but its just a sandbox for Nokia and developers, a chance to get it into the minds of consumers and developers. Huge sales at this point wont matter.

What matters is Framework, Technology, Software and Timing. When Maemo and Symbian come together under Qt, app development will increase rapidly and a large number of the apps developed for the N900 will be ported. The OS's will be mature enough to promote heavily and consumers will create demand through this exposure, creating demand from the carriers.

The devices your seeing now are stepping stones, i wouldnt expect Nokia to gain share in the US until this time next year when new devices are announced with carrier support due to the ground work done by community's like this, app developers and Nokia's reworking of the Maemo to allow custom roms.

We already know that Maemo is a 5 step program and that 2 more devices are in development including an E-Series. Also Imagine what S60 devices will be announced next year, with all these Qt apps and a shiny new UI on the table. As the closed environments show their limitation, the Nokias of the world will gain mind share as consumers reluctance to be locked down matures. Hopefully its going to be a good time for Nokia and for whichever carrier is on board in the US.



(disclaimer: I could be talking out of my arse here but thats how i read the situation)

ps sorry for the long post.

The more I wanted to refute this... I simply cannot. You hit it on the head in a way that I wasn't really thinking about.

However, there's only one problem I have. Nokia hasn't been playing any of these carrier games for a while. In fact, the offerings from Nokia that are indeed subsidized that are worth a darn are far and few between in the US.

In fact, it's been stated before. It just seems like Nokia gave up on the US market.

Will the N900 be a game changer... for Nokia perhaps? They'll sit back down at the table with the carriers and work with them, not away from them?

But... your words. You got me thinking.

I did. Thanks.

Erm.. No. Theres only one possible US 3G network the N900 will work on in its current form.

Am i wrong?

for data, right. for voice, no.

But I totally misread your comment. Thought you meant there was only one 3G network in the US.

For a fair cost comparison:
32GB iPhone 3G from Apple in Oz costs A$1040, which is about US$775 +tax.
That's about 10% more that the street retail price of the N97, so I expect the N900 to be similarly priced, if it sells here, and cheaper online.
The 32GB iPhone is "free" on a 24month plan with $2736 min. spend. So that's a huge subsidy, but if you got an N900 and used VoIP, you'd only need a $15/month 1GB data plan. Not much room for a subsidy in that :-)

I see the N900 does 850MHz EDGE. How acceptable would that be in North America as an alternative to 3G?

My personal opinion... I'd rather not use EDGE unless I truly had to because I was not in a full 3G area.

Edge was the reason I upgraded my phone in the first place.

Or it says something about the stupidity of the U.S. gov (relying on secret programs, data formats and protocols is not the best course of action for any government).

Maybe Nokia wants to convince T-Mobile that the N900 is going to be for them what the iPhone was/is for AT&T?

Most of us assume that the N900 is ready for mass use, however Nokia may not think the same, so they would prefer a careful and limited launch, to "test their wings" and create a user core.

That user core would be a nice base for a Harmattan release. This, plus the experience from the N900 release plus the more developed network T-Mobile should have by then would be the ideal scenario for a Harmattan device mass deployment, perhaps at price zero with subsidy, like the N97 in Europe.

Remember Nokia thinks long term and their win strategy is based in sheer device numbers.

One more thing: even if there is no big US release, the N900 has already fulfilled something very important: it shut up the doomsayers and Nokia haters.

Now no one can deny that Nokia is in the cutting edge. That buys them some time to properly develop and release the next version of Symbian, and Harmattan too.

One last edit: That is probably why the N900 got so little time in Nokia World: the N900 speaks for itself, while they have to convince their partners that Symbian, despite being under so much fire recently, is still valuable and important.

Well, we do know that there are two more Maemo devices planned for 2010: one Fremantle device in Q1 and a Harmattan device in Q3/Q4. So far, things look pretty similar to Nokia's previous platform introductions:

1. Introduce a rather specialized first device to test the market (see Nokia 7650). See how things go.
2. Introduce cheaper mass-market device with pretty much the same capabilities (see Nokia 3650). See how things go.
3. Start making devices of all shapes and colors, based on the same platform and what people say of the first two devices.

You can see similar pattern with S60e5 (5800, then more devices), N95 (followed by N81, N82, etc), and so on. Thus, based on this prediction, we should see a stripped down mass-market N900 in Q1-2010, then the Harmattan device, and if everything goes well, explosion of different Maemo devices in 2011.