Well quiet simple, it has something to do with how the cellphone market in the US is much younger then Europe's. Back in the mid-to-late 90's Nokia made the best cellphones out there. They were clearly superior and pretty much everybody was buying Nokia phones. At least pretty much everybody in Europe was, because at that time having a cellphone in the US was still considered somewhat unusual. Thous Europe got into into the habit of using and trusting Nokia phones, while the US did not. When Apple, Google and RIM joined the market, Nokia phone were really nothing extraordinary anymore and without a large user-base trusting your brand, there's just no reason to buy one. Edit: RIM has the opposite problem, btw.
