The migration of wireless technology to higher-speed networks like LTE that are based on the GSM standard used by Nokia should also help the Finnish company sell phones

But in the United States, despite two decades of trying, Nokia is struggling. The company, based in Finland, has seen its market share slip to 7 percent in June, down from 10 percent a year earlier and from a market-best 35 percent in March 2002.

Three years after Apple introduced the iPhone, Nokia has no touch-screen sales hit or phenomenon to compete with it as American consumers shop for Christmas.

Nokia is trying to recover from a decade-long set of mistakes that is forcing the company to play catch-up with Samsung, LG, Motorola, Research in Motion and Apple.

Among its biggest blunders in terms of U.S. sales, according to analysts and former Nokia executives, the company failed to design nearly all of its phones to meet the taste of American consumers.

It also designed its models to work on a European communications standard called GSM when about half the U.S. market — including the customers of Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel — uses CDMA.

An executive at a North American network operator, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said, “The attitude at Nokia was basically: ‘Here is a phone, do you want it?’ Nokia wouldn’t play by the rules here, and they have paid a price.”

“They claim they get it and understand the U.S. market,” said Ramon Llamas, a senior analyst at IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts. “It’s the story we have heard for the past couple of years. But the execution still is not there.”

Besides initially failing to adapt its handsets for U.S. networks, Nokia did not anticipate changes in American consumer tastes, like the development of preferences for flip phones and touch screens, said Neil Mawston, an analyst in London with Strategy Analytics.

Originally Posted by tso

heh, i keep seeing US journalists praise the US made CDMA mobile system any chance they get...

btw, have anyone else noticed that the real mobile action is in africa, south asia and eastern europe? all areas where there is no big legacy installations of wired networks, be their phone or otherwise?

hell, didnt nokia launch a payment system for their S40 phones specifically aimed at african nations?

i do wonder if N900-like products, ones they get over the early adopter pricing, will sell big in those areas of the world...

“Nokia, at the height of its success, decided not to adapt its phones for the U.S. market; that was a mistake,” said Ari Hakkarainen, a Nokia business development executive from 1999 through 2007. “They are still trying to recover from this.”