No Nokia N9 for US. Not yet, anyway

KYC has learned that Nokia's touchscreen, N9, MeeGo superphone won't be landing on U.S. shores as one of its first ports of call..

Yesterday, Nokia's Swedish Website went live with word that the N9 would go on sale there beginning next month. When we saw the site, we quickly asked Nokia PR in this country when we would see our N9's. According to the e-mail received this morning it won't be very, very soon:

“After the very positive reception to the launch of the Nokia N9, the product is now being rolled out in countries around the world. At this time, we will not be making it available in the US.”

KnowYourCell editors got to touch an N9 when we visited Nokia's new Sunnyvale, California headquarters, last month. So now we can't wait to spend more than just 2 minutes with one. The hardware was beautiful. But didn't have enough time to check-out the software.

Now, we know the United States is not one of Nokia's top markets but we were hoping we'd be among the first to play with one. It may not work out that way:

"Nokia takes a market by market approach to product roll out and each country makes its own decisions about which products to introduce from those available. Decisions are based on an assessment of existing and upcoming products that make up Nokia’s extensive product portfolio and the best way in which to address local market opportunities"

The N9 is the first device that runs on the MeeGo (it was a Linux-based, Nokia and Intel joint-effort) operating system). The OS is an outgrowth of Nokia's last stab at a mobile OS, called Maemo. 

Nokia had been pinning all their hopes on MeeGo until the company made their recent shift to devices that will run on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS (as early as September).

MeeGo is still being developed by Intel, ad is expected to make their way into non-phone devices like an Asus Netbook – expected to be making it's way to North American shores within the next few weeks.

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