+ Why is Symbian virtually absent in the United States?

[Christopher Skelton]

w900 is expensive cuz it stopped production...w800/k750 can all be found for bargain prices...k800 is much cheaper than a n73~

i think nokia phones stay expensive for a little longer, but no need for a debate

[sw33ty]

ahh but everyone knows it and people aren't scared of your phone either.

some of my family and friends think my e62 is from freakin' outerspace.

i think that nokia needs to make more quadband phones. a friend of mine had an N90 and hated it because of the bad rf. he had no clue it was because he was on cingular and his phone didn't have 850.

another reason is that perhaps not enough people want symbian. they just want their phones to make calls, look cool, send text messages and take crappy pictures. in that order. most people i know want a phone that does these things and could care less about much else.

and whoever said that americans view cameras as a gimmick, i'm not sure i can agree with that. from what i have seen a phone not having a camera is blasphemy. it's almost a status symbol.

[pro-model]

amen to that! its so lame how only a few of the N Series phones are quadband. Arent the N series phones supposed to be the highest of the high end? I think with more quadband phones Nokia would see a larger amount of phones being imported to the us.

[orlowskikevin]

"you know, the whole reason i put this blog up was so that i could have a place to put unfettered writing. too often, we are constrained by the rules of writing, as if something as arbitrarily constructed as a piece of writing could ever have rules. notice that i?m not capitalizing? yeah, that?s because i hate taking the time to capitalize. i just want to type, and not worry about it"!

http://ollywompus.wordpress.com/2006/11/13/the-joy-of-writing/




.....at least you know I've read your stuff!!

[Caly]

I started out with a Nokia 6600 from t-mobile. I got it because I read the manual online and found it supported email with ssl imap and ability to use authenticated SMTP for outgoing email. I snapped it up and was happy.

As time went on I went to t-mobile's website and the 6600 was dropped and no new Symbian phones were offered. Was pretty bummed out. Wanted a phone with a better camera since I got addicted to moblog sites.

Then someone mentioned the N90 and I just had to have it. Found out it could be had from Ritz Camera. Went there and it was t-mobile branded (in a t-mobile box and the software on the phone starts up as t-mobile and had all the proper SMS/MMS settings.)

Now waiting on the release of the N95. I'll head to New York City to go to the Nokia store if I need to, to get it (I always look for excuses to go to the city, so no big deal there, only 90 minutes away on Amtrak)

[a? CeliyTeima?]

So back a few years ago I was using a Psion PDA. It ran an operating system called EPOC, which eventually evolved into Symbian. The Psion 5mx was a great PDA. Light years ahead of where Palm was at the time (support for multitasking, a really nice keyboard). The Psion 5mx was a bit like a Nokia 9500 with a greyscale touch sensitive screen and a nicer keyboard. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_5 or http://www.amazon.com/Psion-Series-5MX-Palmtop-Computer/dp/B00000JX3C

The thing is, the Psion PDAs were immensely popular in Europe. In North America though they were pretty much unheard of. Most PDAs in North America were Palms, with eventually a few PPC PDAs.

So fast forward a few years, and it's similar. Symbian, that evolved from EPOC, is very popular in Europe. Here in North America the high end phone/PDA combo market is dominated by Windows Smartphones, Treos, and Blackberries.

Of course, part of this has its origin in the fact that both Nokia and Sony Ericsson withdrew from the North American CDMA market, and we do have a lot of CDMA in North America. However, perhaps part of the issue has its origin in the old EPOC vs Palm days.

[hailie]

Motorola will suck the marrow dry out of the V3/RAZR line. They did the same thing with the V60. There must have been 10 variations of that. And lets not forget the multiple variations of the V400/500.

[Boner]

There is good and bad in both....the good as you said is having a unique phone that most people gawk at....the bad is the fact that we have to buy our s60s on blind faith and photos from the web. In Dubai you can more than likely walk into a retail store and demo a phone to see if it's physically what you want.

[TinkTink]

Not to nitpick, but man grammar!
It's : -

"as BIG A deal"

- OR -

"as MUCH OF a deal"

- BUT NOT -

"as big of (a) deal"

[Dieter4Real]

These are the best observations so far. I don't agree with those others that say "cheap/sleek" is the reason, since other smartphones are selling well. I definitely agree that the wide spread use of CDMA in the U.S. is one of the biggest reasons Symbian doesn't have a good foothold in this market, as well as a lack of name recognition. And with the complete absense of them from T-Mobile USA, that only leaves Cingular to carry the load.