An American smartphone

LOS ANGELES--This is America. We like SUVs, wide-screen TVs and augmentative plastic surgery. Why can’t we have big smartphones, too?

Nokia for years has been pushing the tiniest and prettiest of smartphones, all of which have sold like hotcakes in Europe and other parts of the world, but haven’t performed for squat in the U.S. where we like our devices served up PDA-style with big honking external keyboards and massive displays—maybe a stubby antenna to boot.

Why the disconnect? Well, Symbian--which has the biggest interest in seeing Nokia succeed in the U.S. since its OS powers all of Nokia’s smart devices--has an explanation. CEO Nigel Clifford says that the PDA was born in the U.S. with Palm, and since then it has become the de facto standard for an intelligent connected device. Not so in Europe where the cellphone was viewed as the progenitor of the modern smart handheld form factor.

So if the U.S. has to be different, why won’t those stubborn Europeans accommodate us and build the Treo- and BlackBerry-like devices we seem to crave? Well, according to Nokia Series 60 U.S. marketing manager Dan Shugrue, the answer for why Nokia, Sony Ericsson and the lot won’t give us American-looking smartphones is also distinctly American. The independent nature of the U.S. wireless market—from differing spectrum bands to CDMA—has made the potential market for Symbian and Series 60 powered smartphones that much smaller. Building a specific smartphone for the Yanks, which would address half of the potential subscriber base and be sold in few other markets in the world, has not been an attractive proposition to most of its licensees. But that attitude is changing as the prospective market for smartphones in the U.S. has increased.

In fact, Nokia’s new E62, unveiled today on the Cingular network, was built primarily with an American perspective in mind. It’s got the massive keyboard and the big screen and would fit in the back pocket of only the most portly businessman. What remains to be seen is whether Nokia is wising up too late. Has America already given its love to RIM and Palm and the assorted Microsoft devices out there, or is there still room for another platform?

Contact me at kfitchard@telephonyonline.com.