I agree that it depends on the carrier's decision.... but do you seriously think nokia does not have the clout to influence a carrier? Even if nokia did not have the clout do you think they could not modify the phone to the carrier's requests if they really cared about america?

The bottom line is nokia has the guts..... they are really trying to change the ridiculous lock ins by the North American market. They dont reallly care about the Americas any more because the developing countries like India is totally covered by nokia. And the system there is very nice with carrier lockins. Even in India there has never been a system of carrier lockin. The apple iphone is the first phone to start that trend in India. But Nokia has India and the rest of Asia firmly in its hand.

Handset producers and carriers are partners. They lobby and negotiate for each business dealings, and that's how Apple got their piece of the pie which most people don't think they deserve (a consumer product without any experience or known expertise in the cellular business). It was Steve Jobs' doing. He's a nutty snake oil salesman and a brilliant negotiator. He could bluff you to fold your pair of aces with his 7-2s (or whatever the worst hand in a holdem game is).

I don't know about Nokia's strategy in the US market, but so far it hasn't impressed anyone, even themselves. Please don't forget that these companies are businesses.. like living things needing to eat to sustain themselves, they focus on making money before any other things to sustain themselves...

I agree nokia or for that matter any company is in the game for making money for the share holders. I also believe there is a right way of doing things. I personally think i can relate with nokia. Nokia is always modest with its products. They try to bring innovation by the user. They do not believe in clamping their products even though they may lose market share. I think these qualities are inherent in the Finn's. I am not saying that is the right way or the other way is wrong.... but i can relate to nokia, because even i am similar. Some of the good things i believe nokia is doing are:

1. Thier foray into open source and contributions upstream
2. They brought symbian and made it open source
3. They always include any damn feature they can include and never clamp down thier devices.
4. They do not charge for firmware updates.
5. They try to wrangle control from the carriers and give it to the users.


All these things they never had to do and they still do. Combining a phone with a service provider will definitely have increased thier share in the US by a great deal. There is no doubt about it. But they chose not to...Now i dont know why they did not choose to combine with the carriers but since it is a no brainer i think they want to prove something to the North American market. I may be wrong but i do not see any other reason for what they are doing in the NA market so i assume what i believe. If you have a better reason i will be glad to listen.

I understand what you are saying. I get frustrated when superior technology is laid to the side by what amounts to generally poor marketing resulting lack of informed consumers in the us market. This creates a cascade of issues because it effects the entire ecosystem products and services customized to users in the US.

I believe that Nokia knows a thing or two about building an ecosystem around a platform as well as how to build and influence markets. I just wish they would apply this to the US market so that when I buy this phone, its use to me, wont be crippled due to an underdeveloped demand of US centric products and services.

I just say the same as others. It's all about the carriers.

I remember reading from quarter report that Nokia sold over 400k N95(all variants) in NA. So i guess N900 could have it's space to move in NA market, but no doubt N900 isn't yet enough. Symbian is special that it controlled European and Asian market, but was left out in NA when it still was in many ways better than it's competition, but now can't see Symbian coming back to NA other than form of Symbian^4.

So Maemo it is. As/if maemo comes the Nokias high end OS and it gets as much as attention as Symbian from Nokia and start churning different phones out in a same rate while these phones are advertised, hyped and subsidies, why not?

@sachin: Hmm, I don't know about the factual background of those claims.. but if they can give such idealistic impression to customers like you, then I really applaud their marketing and PR department.

I just want to comment on #4, I don't know of any company that dares to charge for Firmware Updates (bugfixes). But OS\Firmware upgrades are usually charged or not offered at all (they're tied to certain models, or have technical restriction to avoid backward compatibility issues).

Sure, it's China......I imagine they throw in the rest of Asia too (excluding India since it can garner the number two slot all on it's own.)
I've seen these stats a few times somewhere.

I don't doubt the N95 sales figures, especially considering all of the American N95 users on my site claiming to prefer TMo. And TMo can tell what devices or on its network, and released that N95 figure back then to show it was a haven for unlocked device users because of price and fair practices. Plus, in the infancy of the Nseries, TMo subsidized the unlocked Euro N90 at select retailers, and today, TMo has a "Premium Collection" of devices they subsidize if bought at Best Buy, mostly Nseries and Eseries models.

They have history with the unlocked device market here.

I tried a search, but don't know if this has been posted yet. PhoneArena is quoting an anonymous tipster stating the N900 will be coming to T-Mobile by next year...

http://www.phonearena.com/htmls/Big-...le-a_7349.html

Interesting, now the question is..

Will TMobile do anything to do the n900 (lock in, branding [ugh])

And will I be buying it this year or next (depending on cost and how soon I need something to fill the gap I need [see other thread about office tool])