The Symbian-powered Nokia N9 will not be released in the USA
In an interview with AllthingsD, Chris Weber (President of Nokia USA) has said that Nokia will effectively end its Symbian line of products in the United States, to focus primarily on Windows Phone 7 (WP7) handset. For Nokia, this is a “do or die” situation where the company is betting the farm on this WP7 smartphone push.
By doing so, Nokia recognizes a new reality for smartphones: whoever wins in the USA, gets definite edge on the worldwide market. By now, every major mobile platform comes from North America (including Canada), and it is clear that winning only in emergent countries is a losing strategy as Nokia’s “glow effect” fades overtime.To put the odds in their favor, Nokia will run an unprecedented marketing and communications campaign when its handsets will launch this fall. As an immediate consequence of this new alignment , the Nokia N9 will not be commercialized in the U.S, even though it had been approved by the FCC.
Now, we wonder how Nokia will deal with U.S carriers. We would expect them to get their new high-end smartphones through their channels, as it is a key distribution point in America. Customers also want to use the carrier subsidies to get cheaper phones. In the past, Nokia has been very keen to sell unlocked phones.
Filed in . Read more about Nokia, Symbian and Windows Phone 7.