Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told a conference this week that the vendor is to begin actively targeting the US market, a region where the world’s largest handset vendor has been historically weak, reports CNet News. Kallasvuo, speaking at the All Things Digital conference in California yesterday, touted GSM operators AT&T and T-Mobile USA as possible operator-partners rather than CDMA operators such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint. “We are starting to make US-specific devices,” Kallasvuo said, according to a separate Dow Jones Newswires report. “I’ve been working on this [building US market share] for a long time.”

Nokia has almost a 40 percent share of the global handset market but less than a 10 percent share in the US, which is dominated by rivals such as Motorola. However, Kallasvuo noted that Nokia was in competition with a range of new players, including Google, RIM and Apple. “Three years ago I wouldn’t have hesitated in saying Motorola was our biggest competitor,” Kallasvuo said. “[Now] the mightiest companies in the world suddenly have emerged as our competitors.” He hinted that Nokia could look to partner with some of its new competitors in areas such as applications. Nokia launched its ‘Ovi’ app store earlier this week in a bid to compete with stores from the likes of Apple.