[Drillbit]

The US has a certain disconnect from the rest of the world because Nokia isn't just popular in Europe, but also in India, the Middle East, in South East Asia, in South America, in Russia, in Central Asia, in Australia, in Africa, in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and some presence even in Japan. Put it this way, Nokia is popular everywhere.

Even without a Nokia brand, a lot of phones in China, Japan (e.g. Docomo FOMA), and Korea run on Symbian. Symbian alone accounts for 72% of the Japanese smartphone market plus a share to Linux, and 60% of the Chinese smartphone market where another 20-30% went to Linux like the MotoMings.

Not only that, the US doesn't represent the majority of mobile phone users in the world. Not by far. China Mobile alone has more subscribers than the entire population of the United States. Heck, there are 600 million subscribers in China alone, and Nokia and Symbian has a strong presence there.

When iPhone went international, guess who took the brunt of it. Particularly vulnerable to Apple's onslaught are multimedia phones like the N-series, the XPressmusic, as well as various Sony Ericsson phones, since SE has a specialty in the area.

When RIM strengthened its overseas presence, the market it was displacing have been Nokia Communicators, and various WM and Palm phones.

RIM's growth in the US market, along with the iPhone, came at the expense of two major players, Palm and Motorola. I think Palm OS and Windows Mobile took it particularly hard, and Palm and WM qwerty handsets were most vulnerable to RIM's market expansion. But thanks to HTC. Samsung, and other Asian manufacturers, WM's share of the market is sustained globally because they are able to penetrate and distribute into areas where Apple and RIM has not invaded or made a strong impact. An example is WM having 90% of the Korean smartphone market.

You really can't count Nokia out. They have revised their strategy and the excellent E-series is clearly gunning at RIM. They are beginning to learn how to play the US carrier game as you can see with the AT&T E71x. They are relying less on the T9 keypad phones, has moved to qwerty, slider qwerty and touchscreen phones. There is an even E-series, the E55, that will boast the short Suretype qwerty format used on the BB Pearls. They have developed their email capabilities further and further, as you can see with the latest release and distribution of S60 (starting on the E71x, E75, 5730XM and E55). In terms of browsers, the S60 browser is as fast as Safari being based on the same webkit engine. It may not have multi touch or pinch, but the browser already has Flash which Apple doesn't. Unlike Win Mo, whose crankiness exposes vulnerabilities, Nokia have refined Symbian to the point its fast, responsive, reliable well featured and well supported by apps. So they can compete with Apple and RIM on equal footing on quality.