Nokia Store Closing In New York [Nokia's Fancy Flagship Store In Manhattan Closing, Nokia Can't Give Away Smartphones]

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It was announced last year, but it happened a few days ago on May 23rd. Nokia’s stylish brick-and-mortar retail store, located in the high-rent Madison Avenue area of Manhattan, has closed. This just about sums up Nokia’s recent luck in selling smartphones in North America.

The Nokia Stores opened up in Manhattan and Chicago around the summer of 2006. Nokia has got a strong hold on the featurephone market, and their smartphones are fairly popular worldwide, but they’ve competed poorly in the United States where BlackBerries and iPhones dominate people’s pockets. Android, as always, is a growing threat, too.

Nokia’s hardware isn’t actually bad, but they’ve got two key problems with their smartphones in the US in our estimation. The first is Symbian. Although it’s the most popular mobile OS in the world, visually it doesn’t compare to the others. As for the app selection, it doesn’t have the trendy “There’s an app for that” mindshare that the iPhone does for the consumers. For business users, you can’t beat BlackBerry’s e-mail functionality.

Nokia often sells their smartphones unsubsidized directly to consumers. In North America, many consumers will only buy the cheapest phone they can, and us Yanks usually have no experience with unlocked phones or contract-free phones (I’m sure many of my countrymen don’t even know what a SIM card is). Nokia’s N-series of smartphones are often sold directly by Nokia for in excess of $400.

Sorry, Nokia, but until those things are selling for $150 on a two-year contact from T-Mobile, most Americans won’t care. It’s a shame, really, because the Nokia N900 is a great phone, with Maemo (although the Maemo calendar needs some work – in my humble opinion) and the Nokia N8 looks really great, and Symbian^3 could bring Nokia back into the smartphone fight. (We’ve put a request into Nokia for a Nokia N8 review unit, stay tuned).

Nokia’s Chicago store is still opened for the time being, with no closing date announced. The cost of the Manhattan store probably contributed to the reason it was being closed, too.

Have you ever used a Nokia smartphone? Are you excited for any upcoming Nokia smartphones (like the Nokia N8)?