Nokia will conduct one of its most aggressive phone launch campaigns ever in the US this year, North American division chief Mark Louison said today in an interview at CES. Considered the largest cellphone manufacturer in the world, the Finnish company only released three handsets in the US last year but now intends to launch "between 6 and 12" phones in the country over the course of 2008 in a bid to gain marketshare. Nokia currently claims 11 percent of the overall US cellphone business.

The move comes just months after Apple's iPhone release, which is expected to cut into the US cellphone market as a whole and surpassed Nokia's smartphone marketshare in its first quarter on sale. Nokia recently began releasing phones with US-based 3G Internet access in the country and at CES introduced the N95 8GB NAM, a North American media and smart phone often considered the most direct counterpart to the Apple cellphone.

Launches will be more aggressive in the second half of the year and may see more than 12 new Nokia phones available. It will be "full steam ahead" in 2009, he says.