The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Nokia is reshuffling management after coming up short on their quarterly earnings, and lowering its full-year profit margin.

Nokia leads all wireless phone makers with the largest market share worldwide.

Thing is, in the US, they lag far behind — both in sales, and in consumers’ minds.

Why is Nokia facing such problems here? Here’s my take:

1. In a market that’s shifting rapidly towards smart phones, Nokia puts its American marketing might behind phones with less functionality.
2. In a market where the top smart phone manufacturers have close partnerships with carriers, Nokia has few.
3. It has big consumer awareness problems: When asked to name the top smart phones, people will think of the iPhone, Blackberries, even HTC and Samsung before they’ll think of Nokia.
4. Nokia simply hasn’t marketed smart phones much, or well, here. Nokia is not talking to consumers.

It didn’t used to be this way. Nokia used to dominate the cell phone market here too, when phones were “less smart.”

But it seems like when RIM and Apple started talking to consumers in America, Nokia simply went away and focused on other international markets.

Nokia is paying the price for this now.