"We really moved to an operator-specific localized strategy in the fall of 2006, [and] that strategy still holds ... the only possible ambition we can have here is to be the market leader," he said. "North America represents a great growth opportunity for us."

Nokia has recently come back to Verizon after being absent a while, he said, and they've been churning out phones for T-Mobile. That's true, but none of those phones are the Symbian Series 60 smart phones that Nokia has really focused on recently. Louison didn't say outright that more Symbian phones are coming to AT&T soon, but he hinted strongly at the possibility while running down Nokia's efforts with US carriers.

"We have some things that are going to get announced soon ... AT&T is a founding board member of the Symbian Foundation," he said.

AT&T has had an uneasy relationship with Symbian for years, keeping one or two lackluster Symbian smart phones in their carrier lineup while rejecting Nokia's flagship phones such as the N95 (at left).

Nokia also made two announcements today bulking up the software platform for their Symbian phones, which are popular everywhere in the world except in the US. They announced a deal with Microsoft to put Exchange connectivity on every single Symbian Series 60 device, and they announced a deal with major Canadian carrier Rogers Wireless to officially support Nokia's GPS navigation service and their N-Gage gaming service.