i know there's a thread called mobile phones under software but i thought itll be more suitable to write here so i'm just wondering

why is it that there's such a big difference in the techonology of mobile phones from country to country

places like Korea and Japan have like amazing phones out i heard
with 7megapixel phones and all that, they use their mobile phones as credit cards i heard as well..

now let's zoom into UK, recently the booming phone is the Sony Ericson k750 which has 2 megapixel camera's and they are going "WOW!!! THIS IS LIKE THE BEST CAMERAPHONE EVER!"

and then there's Canada (where i am staying temporarily right now)
all the phones here are phones i saw in UK 1~2 years ago.

The Motorola RAZR which is being advertised now is like... ages old in UK...

please, what is going on, why don't they just import the technologies from the east quickly enough already..

I have lived in Germany and the United States. The phone I had in Germany circa 2003 was a couple years ahead of the US. And I had a cheap Pre-paid one from Vodaphone.
The United states has been behind the rest of the world in cell phone technology for the past two decades. Why? Well there are a lot of reasons.

First off, people in the United States use their phones to talk on. In Germany I rarely called anyone, I SMS text messaged more than anything. Only time I talked was when people from the United States called me because it costed me nothing to talk when they called in. (I wish it worked like that in the US). Its been only recently has sending pictures and stuff like that has become popular.

Second off is that the United States & Canada is far larger geographically and it costs a lot of money to set up new telecom infracstructure. Also the united states has the best, in terms of coverage, wired infrastructure in the world that was invested into for well over a 100 years. Countries like China, it is now cheaper to put in wireless coverage, so in that respect devloping nations are at an advantage for wireless technologies over the United States.

Also I should note, the whenever I say United States, I really should really say North American since Canadian telecom tech is very close to that of the United States for obvious reasons.

As a cell phone user in the United States, we use Sprint at work and I have one of those fancy do-everything-including SSH dataphones. At home I have cingular, in fact I switched to the new no-contract plan that just bills my credit card monthly because I travel between the US and Germany (Consultant). I'm contracted in the US through December 1st of this year, but my next contract might be in Germany. So I could cancel my plan without termination fees and move. The company I work for has a no camera policy in the server area and development area because we develop our own inhouse stuff. Plus, I have a DOD security clearence and do work from time to time for DOD contractors where cameras are also forbidden. It is now becomming harder for me to find phones with good call reception and clarity without the fancy gizmos. All I want is a flip with outside caller-id and that is it. The phone I have now is a flip, but no out side caller ID. It works for the $80 I paid for it from Cingular, but not what I would have preferred.

So I would say some of it has to deal with geopgraphy, existing tech infrastructure, and how North Americans use cell phones.

So far, I've been to Japan, United States, and Singapore. Yes, Singapore too has grown VERY fast. Why? Let me quote from unimatrix here:

Unlike the United States, Japan and Singapore is physically WAY smaller. Let's start with the biggest of the 2.

Japan has one of the largest population densities in the world and also one of the worst places where you would like to live your life in. This is because Japan faces the Pacific Ocean. As we all know, many hurricanes and such build up in the ocean, thus it really does alot of damage to Japan if it were to be hit. What does Japan do? They import technology from other countries all over the world. Technologies that will save those precious 40-storey buildings and many other common-folk's homes.

At the same time, attracting many other immigrants to migrate and settle there because of the technology-filled lifestyle. This thus attracts many big companies such as Panasonic, Sony, HP, and a lot others. These companies develop their ideas here and test them in the local area. (Thus u get the idea why many newest cellphones come out in Japan/Korea faster than any other country). The government may also afford to wire up the whole island with the newest in telecommunications technology, because its so small!
Same goes with Singapore, being smaller than a pencil dot on the world Map, it is one of the fastest growing countries, fastest growing in both population and technology. Although it is not a hotspot for many companies to settle in because of lack of landspace, it IS burningly hot for companies to try out new models of electronics because there's is such a high population density. Singapore is also so small that wiring the whole island would cost a digit from the cost North America has to pay to wire everything up.

Thus, compared to the smaller countries, The United States may be big for its own good but the cons may stretch fifty feet long.

Technology has grown everywhere in the world very quickly, not just in phones either, in everything! We are living in the most advanced era the human race has ever seen (obviously) Technology is just growing and speading like crazy! Just in the past 100 years, we have advaced 10 times more than we did in the other thousands or millions of years, depending on how long you believe the Earth has been around for.