It owns a staggering 40 percent of the global handset market, yet Nokia possesses a paltry 8 percent share of the United States pie, and zero carrier relationships, and the bad news does not end there, analysts say.

The recession, and the growing popularity of smartphones from Apple, Research In Motion, Samsung, LG, and the emerging dark horse HTC, are likely to deal Nokia’s U.S. hopes a series of crippling body blows.

Also, the emergence of LTE, a mobile technology that will reset the technology-fragmented U.S. mobile market in the favor of European handset makers such as Nokia, will be delayed because of the global credit crisis, analysts say.

Add to Nokia's woes the competitive field it will face when LTE finally emerges in the U.S., which includes RIM, Apple, and possibly a rejuvenated Motorola, will be in full fight.

Three of the top five U.S. carriers use CDMA as their base technology, a weak spot for Nokia. And Nokia’s connection to the two GSM carriers in the U.S., AT&T and T-Mobile USA, is strained.

LTE has emerged as the unanimous next step for both GSM and CDMA carriers, so it will remove the fragmentation in the U.S. market that has frustrated European carriers such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson

Both AT&T, the GSM standard bearer in the U.S., and Verizon Wireless, the CDMA leader, plan to upgrade to LTE.

“But there is no capital available in the market and the carriers need to preserve capital, so I am not saying the LTE build-out will stop but it will take a lot longer than most people planned,” said Shahid Khan, an analyst with IBB Consulting.

Annual revenue per user (ARPU) will decline during what is likely to be an extended recession, he said, and whether the carriers planned to finance LTE with outside capital or their balance sheets, they will now think twice.

Strategy Analytics analyst Bonny Joy disagrees.

“LTE will remove the single most important U.S. market barrier that Nokia faces and carriers are the least affected by the recession, so I suspect LTE will not be significantly delayed,” he said.

But both analysts agree that Nokia faces a task in the U.S. that is growing more daunting by the moment.

The U.S. handset market is growing faster than the rest of the world, according to most measures, despite the recession. And the two major North American smartphone makers, Apple and RIM, are beginning to steal market share from Nokia even in Europe, Nokia’s home turf.

“RIM, Apple, and Samsung have more compelling offerings than Nokia, which makes things even tougher for Nokia,” Mr. Khan said.

And Motorola, which is now fully committed to Google’s Android operating system, could re-emerge as a force in the U.S. market.

In the meantime Nokia seems to be headed in the wrong direction in the U.S.

The global powerhouse is actually losing share in the U.S., according to Strategy Analytics. Nokia’s U.S. market share has nosedived from 16.4 percent in 2005 to a projected 8 percent in 2008.