Typically, at least in the US, we see the same thing. The ad features a specific phone or brand and the carrier gets reimbursed for the buy. This is known as Co-op advertising and is common in most retail advertising.

Among wireless companies, Verizon is the master of this, you'll never, ever see a VZW ad without some phone, usually an LG, being featured even if only for a few seconds, and even if the ad has nothing to do with a feature of a phone (the famous "can you hear me now?" ads had nothing to do with handsets, but they always pushed one as a donut in the middle). Back when I was in advertising, we had several account execs who were masters of hunting down co-op dollars for clients and at least one client even made money by running co-op ads all the time. There are lots of rules that have to be followed when producing a co-op ad, usually involving the size of logos and how many seconds they are displayed. The clients also need to provide records of all the times and channels where they appeared, but it is worth it since it lets small shops get affordable advertising.

If Nokia really wanted to get into the market with unlocked phones, that would be the way to do it, but instead of going through the carriers, offer co-op dollars to independent dealers like Best Buy (yes, they even have some unlocked Nokia phones in their stores), Fry's and Car Toys. They could even leverage some of their movie tie-in cred to get something interesting produced that would make it real easy to get something out there in a hurry that would drive traffic to a super-store. I'm thinking an easy "buy a qualified Nokia phone and get Star Trek on DVD or Blue Ray for $5... only at Best Buy." with a BB graphic at the end, or something like that.

Right, but it wasn't overt. BTW I love the slider phones. I'm not sure why flip phones are more popular in the US.

I have fairly good coverage with T-Mobile here in Colorado. And if you look at the TMO and AT&T coverage maps the only difference you'll see is less 3G on TMO. They all roam on each others networks, and do so flawlessly (although maybe not with data, but you can sill text and phone... same is true with AT&T). I also have a Verizon Blackberry for work and it does have slightly better coverage, but once you get out of town out here nothing other than my 2 Meter HT has coverage worth a damn, and that only with a 3 element beam attached.

Their popularity can pro'ly be traced back to one person...

Captain James Tiberius Kirk

...beam me up Scotty.

No, rarely see any advertising by Nokia other than in the print media. Much of that will be by carriers or shops like Carphonewarehouse.

Recently I've noticed billboards for the SE Satio and Blackberry, as well as Satio adverts on TV, though that stopped since the recall.

I've seen Blackberry "sponsoring" FlashForward, and a couple of times there have been adverts for Ovi, though I only saw that a few times, not since the New Year.

The majority of TV advertising that I notice is the Palm Pre and most of all, the annoying Apple ones with "there's an app for that"...

remembers me...

You don't see a lot of Nokia ads here in the US, but they are seriously into the product placement.

The last season of Dexter had a cavalcade of Eseries phones in the characters' hands.

Well here is a somewhat impatient negative coverage
http://www.gizmag.com/nokias-n900-po...ealized/13896/