He totally omitted the crappy networks in the US. Everything they do there works much better in Europe. Even Silicon Valley has bad coverage. The iPhone is much more fun here.

It's typical scoble: Internet filler as well as bird cage liner for those who like giving their literate birds a laugh.

Everybody pulls for the "home team"... in Europe, they'll pull for Nokia, in Japan they'll pull for KDDI/NTT Docomo, in USA they'll pull for Apple, and in China, they might pull for Lenovo.

The crappy US networks is pretty damn true. No excuses, but some areas are still rural and badly covered. Heck, some urban areas are badly covered.

This would have to be true for everything (and everybody), not just cell phone manufacturers, or it would be a weak assertion if even true. I'm a native born American and I've been working with computers before there was an MS-DOS, and I've never pulled for Microsoft about anything. Ever. And that's true for 95% of all geeks I know of similar background. I claim false assertion. I pull for the people that I think have the biggest clue, and that can change from quarter to quarter. So, using quantum physics probabilities, I could be pulling for Microsoft in the Fall. But most likely I'll keep pulling for that Finnish dude.

Or were you guys just talking about bloggers and reporters?

I'm an American, but while living in Japan I noticed a few things. That observation is obviously true about video games as well. American or Euro games are rarely a hit in Japan. It is very rare... it happens, but rare. Same with cars...

And for the record... not many people pull for Microsoft on anything. Everybody loves the underdog when a monopoly is present. Linux is an underdog... one that has yet to really its stride outside of geek or other circles that aren't mainstream.

In cellphone there isn't a monopoly really - Motorola went from hit (StarTac) to hit (RAZR) to flop (now). Just a bunch of home teams that people might get behind.

Anyway, this article is totally off-base.

lets just say that japanese have a special issue with that stuff. Hell, workers may well refuse to drink beer made by a company thats not related to the company they work...

Loyalty to a new level... no doubt. I was "in trouble" for being seen buying a Nintendo game while working at Sega. No joke.

You're mixing up market with home team. Of course an EU company will focus on marketing, service and deployment most heavily in EU as it's the market it knows best, and as a result, will have a stronger presence. So it's a push, not a pull. The only cases where this is not true is for companies that are grossly export oriented - and these are usually located in smaller (for the given product class) markets targeting big ones like EU/US/Japan -> see China, Korea, Taiwan, etc.

Mostly smoking, but he has a point.

Nokia are nowhere in North America, and losing more market share by the year - North America represented 4.5% of worldwide sales for Nokia last year, a reduction of 16% year on year, and worldwide Nokia lost 3% market share year-on-year in Smartphones (compare with RIM up 82%, Apple up 328%).

As far as Smartphones are concerned, North America is now where it's at both in terms of hardware, operating systems and services and just at a time when Nokia is more out of the game (in North America at least) than ever. Symbian, S60 and Ovi are frankly a disaster by comparison and the bolt-on touch additions are going to make Nokia competitive in the same that Win Mobile 6.5 is failing to sweep the floor with the competition.

What is happening in North America translates very easily to Europe, that's beyond debate (RIM and Apple are wildly successful in Europe, Android is very successful and only likely to improve as more devices arrive, with only Palm and WebOS as the unknown in Europe). The North American-based devices are flying off the shelves and European developers are creating interesting applications and services for the North American devices, just as the North American developers have done before them.

If Scoble means that Nokia doesn't matter when he refers to "Europe" then I think he has a point - Nokia are no longer at the center of the mobile universe. Nokia will continue to sell low-end phones by the truckload but in terms of smartphones they are on the verge of no longer being relevant. Nokia need to re-invent themselves soon in order to make themselves relevant and regain the significant mind-share that has been lost to North American companies. Perhaps Maemo is the solution, if so they will have only one shot with Fremantle so its execution had better be flawless.

In addition, Scoble could be referring to Symbian which can be seen as a European operating system - Symbian as the smartphone operating system of choice is now on life support, the guys from Symbian Foundation reckon they'll have a new release out in 12-18 months time, will anyone care by then? I doubt it.

As Hempel from CNN Money/Fortune Magazine points out:

I am still trying to figure out where smartphones fit in the larger market.

Sure, i have found myself wanting a smartphone, but them i am a geek. But i find that as time moves forward, feature phones gain many of the most popular features of a smart phone. Hell, if the definition of a smartphone is that it can run third party stuff, my SE C702 is a smartphone, as it can juggle multiple j2me apps

I am not sure if the general public want, or even know, what a smartphone is. And thats the big problem with all us geeks, pundits and whatsnot, we have our head in the tech grind so much that we may not be able to detach and look at it from a "outsiders" point of view.

It seems that email, and having that on the phone (or maybe in the pocket, RIM products where not phones at first), is a big thing in US. As i think about it, i cant help but wonder if that had something to do with compuserve, aol and all that. People got used to having a kind of email address.

Thing is, i do not recall reading about such services in european nations. Closest i can come up with was a terminal style product that got used in england and france, minitel or something. But when gsm came online, and nokia launched a phone that could send sms, not just receive, sms exploded, especially among teens.

At first the 160 limit was punishing, but that lead to the development of the texting dialects (if one can call them that). Then one got phones that could nail together multiple messages into one long message.

Mms came along with the camera phones, and is probably mostly still used to send quick images, and the odd video. Sure, one could use a email address for that, but i have grandparents that have never owned a computer, but they sure have a mobile phone in the house. Thing is that mms shares that one number that one also use for sms and calls, rather then having a second addrees, the email address, that one send to.

Another thing is a observation i did at some point, that while most people i know would hang up when they hit the voicemail service of someone they wanted to call, and instead type out a sms and send it, USA seemed hooked on voicemail, and its offshot, push-to-talk. Just look at the big reaction apple got when they showed of visual voicemail, tho i suspect most people outside of USA just went "err, ok?" and sent another sms...

all in all, sms have entered culture in a way. radio and tv shows base their audience interaction on sms these days, for instance. More then one channel have scrolling sms greetings along some edge of their screen...

Thing is this, while big flashy apps are found on the latest greatest smartphones, sms is found on just about any phone (closely followed by its cousin, mms), and as such is available to anyone, including grandparents surviving on a minimum pension. And lets not forget, sms service info can be printed in pure text. A code, some additional info and a short 4-5 digit number.