Fail: The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Debut in USA
Fail.
Nokia started selling the 5800 XpressMusic phone on Friday.
Nokia stopped selling the 5800 XpressMusic phone on Friday.
Yeah, that’s right – the touch-screen device was on sale at US Nokia Flagship stores for only a couple hours before being pulled from the shelves and replaced by a – gasp! – European version. The reason? 3G signal problems that occurred in New York and Chicago, but apparently NOT in Dallas or Miami.
“The investigation is ongoing on the device itself and the network used in these cases,” a Nokia spokeswoman said, adding that it was an isolated issue only found in North America. She declined to comment on why the phone would work in some markets and not others.
In the rest of the world, the 5800 XpressMusic has been selling like hotcakes: a little over a month ago, Nokia announced that it had shipped its 1 millionth 5800 device, with the bulk of sales going to emerging markets.
The funny part of the whole situation is that it doesn’t really make much of a difference on Nokia’s bottom line. Most people in the United States have never heard of, and probably will never hear of, the 5800 XpressMusic, or 99% of Nokia’s other phones being sold in the Flagship stores. This is pretty much a sad fact due to the company not wanting to play ball with the big three wireless carriers (AT&T, T-mobile, Verizon). Or vice versa.
