I can guarantee I know more about this than you ever will, but why listen to me, I'm just a guy commenting on an internet forum who happens to do this sort of thing for my day job. I don't know where you are getting your facts, but Nokia was an iconic brand in the US for a very long time, but they failed to innovate and capture the markets attention and drifted into a state of malaise, which is why they eventually were sold to Microsoft.
People can use the USA as a paradigm for market behavior because the US controls a significant portion of the US GDP and their companies are swallowing up foreign companies, especially in the technology space. India and China may have many, many more people, but they don't spend like an American or even European does (just look at the per capita GDP numbers).
I also believe it was rumor that Nokia can return to the smart phone market by 2016. Microsoft has pretty good lawyers, and I've done enough of these sorts of contracts to know their is usually at least a 3-5 year non-compete. That assumes they even could compete (they can't, unless they license out the name like Westinghouse did).
As I said before, it's a pipedream, get over it and if you don't like Windows Phone, good bye
1 - You can do whatever you want for a job. It doesn't make your opinion neither better nor more true. You may be arrogant to the point of believing you own the answers to everything and anything and that all others are wrong and that if you declare something "a pipedream", then it *must* be what you say... but in the end of the day, unless you're a member of Nokia's Board of Directors, you know nothing and your opinion is worth little. You're not a member of the Nokia BoD, you're not Nokia's CEO, you're not Nokia's chairman, your opinion on what Nokia will or will not do matters not. Just like mine doesn't (unless shareholders get to vote on it, in which case, mine will count something).
2 - "
People can use the USA as a paradigm for market behavior because the US controls a significant portion of the US GDP and their companies are swallowing up foreign companies, especially in the technology space."
2.1 - The USA doesn't control the majority of the World's mobile phone market. Furthermore, the functioning of the American market is radically different from the rest of the World. Example: NO company needs to beg, whine or bribe carriers for their phones to sell. In Europe, for example, you don't need carriers to sell phones. People buy them directly from either the OEM's or from tech retail stores. There's no "exclusivity", nor wide-spread use of "contracts" and certainly no "subsidies". Therefore, in Nokia's case, they do NOT need any carriers to sell phones. They just need to put them on the shelves and market them. As every OEM does. Carriers have no say neither on what people can or can not buy to use on their network and they pick the phones they want to pick. A carrier can, eventually, request an OEM to add something to the phone they're carrying (like Telef?nica did with the 64GB version of the 1020) but they could NEVER do what AT&T does with Qi charging and strip phones from their functionalities just because the carrier wants the OEM to.
2.2 - The fact that US companies are swallowing foreign companies has NOTHING to do with sales and it certainly has nothing to do with sales of phones in the US or anywhere else. Otherwise Motorola would sell by the millions instead of Samsung. If you actually take a close look at the "American" companies in the phone business...well, you have Apple. Apple IS relevant in the US market. The other relevant Android brands in the US market are NOT American. In Europe, on the other hand, Apple has residual relevance. In some markets it's a big deal, in others not so much. And Motorola has lost almost all the relevance they once had. And as soon as the "Nokia" name goes away from Microsoft phones, you'll see sales of Microsoft Mobile phones plumb. And you have a much more colourful landscape. Sony is huge in Europe for example, and almost absent in the US. HTC is not as popular over here but LG is. And we also have Alcatel, Wiko, Jolla and other European based companies that sell phones but not by the millions. Then you have Samsung, of course.
Any return of Nokia isn't mandatory to be done in their prior scale. Who told you they would launch phones globally? They can perfectly well do: 1 - what Sony does and focus on markets where they're relevant (Europe, India) or 2 - do what Motorola does with the US and focus 99% of their attention in Europe.
3 - If you do "this" for a living (whatever "this" is), you must not be very good at it. "
I also believe it was rumor that Nokia can return to the smart phone market by 2016." READ. THE. DEAL. It's available online. It has been for a year. Google it.
Nokia can't return to smartphones until 2016. Period. It's as clear as day and as a lawyer I can tell you myself, Microsoft will NOT be able to go around it. No matter how much you twist and turn it.