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The impact of iPhone and Android has always been disproportionate in the US, compared to Europe and Asia, because of the weakness of the global handset giants in north America. Nokia and Sony Ericsson are virtually not present, while Samsung and LG are only just getting serious about open OS smartphones, and have mainly been confined to featurephones in the US. Motorola, too, has been slow to embrace the smartphone, though it has made a convincing early splash with Droid. In 2010, though, Apple and Google - once an axis, now bitter rivals - will have a far tougher ride, as Nokia and the Koreans gain more ground in US smartphones.

The scene was set by AT&T, which mapped out a future that might not include an iPhone exclusive. Though Android featured, it was firmly multiplatform, throwing lifelines to Palm and Brew, and most importantly, giving Nokia its longed-for entry point to the US mainstream. And Verizon Wireless is unlikely to put all its eggs in the Android basket either - as well as possibly getting its own Apple device, it remains heavily committed to BlackBerry, and is likely to bring LiMO into the mix, emulating its co-parent Vodafone, later this year.

AT&T has been getting closer to Nokia for the past year or more. It has finally announced the long expected support for Ovi Store, which almost certainly presages the introduction of more Nokia/Symbian phones into its line-up. Symbian could take a strategic position in its web services strategy as this evolves in 2010, but Nokia's other OS, Linux-based Maemo, could be more significant at the high end. Maemo is the most advanced mobile OS out there, and although it only runs on a few devices, these could give AT&T the heavyweight and differentiated smartphone it needs at the top end, if the iPhone goes non-exclusive.

Just days after AT&T backed Ovi Store, Nokia extended support for the shopfront to the N900, the flagship Maemo product, which fits firmly into the niche but high value space between the phone and the netbook - also pursued by Nexus One, the upcoming Intel-based LG GW900 and others. The N900/Ovi combination is likely to net an AT&T carrier deal, bringing the gadget to US consumers with subsidies at last, say insiders at the Finnish giant. To date, the N900 is supported on T-Mobile's 3G bands, but only on an unsubsidized basis, which means a price tag of $500 to $700. Now, a version tweaked for AT&T's 3G frequencies, and with Ovi Store, could convince US consumers at last that Apple and Google are not the only smartphone games in town, and might even attract a T-Mobile subsidy too.

Ovi Store was necessary to enhance the Maemo/N900 experience. As noted on the jkOnTheRun blog, it is far better than the phone's embedded Application Manager, which requires a time-consuming process of adding software repositories in order to download new apps. Maemo apps are still small in number, but Nokia will engage in a major push to attract developers this year, and US carrier deals would help.

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