Nokia: Dying in America?

It’s just fascinating walking around on the ground here in San Francisco observing the mobile habits of the population. Like my experiences in LA in October, San Francisco isn’t that representative of the country as a whole. If anything, it’s a lot more advanced than… I dunno… Somewhere in Nebraska. Silicon Valley is just a few miles away as are Apple and Google HQs.

Reading in today’s issue of Herald Tribune that Nokia’s US market share has decreased from 28% in 2005 to ‘barely 10%’ today.

Not good.

A whirlwind tour around the major mobile operator stores is revealing.

Sprint: Don’t do Nokia
Verizon: No Nokia
T-Mobile: 6 models
AT&T: 5 models

Deary me.

Obviously it’s a different market place, not much in the way of phone subsidies and the like. But it’s still a huge market. Huge.

So if you’re an average consumer, a normob (“normal mobile user”) and you’d like a Nokia? Well. Stuff you. Stuff you, with bells on. You can go and buy a 400+ dollar handset at some of the Nokia stores in some of the big cities across the States… or, how would you fancy this Motorola, sir?

Gahh. I’d like to see Nokia a lot more ubiquitous across the States… I really would…