A Nokia netbook PC maybe closer than you thought / Posted by Ari 01.03.2009 07:38

Reuters created a buzz in the media and among bloggers when the news agency reported that Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo admitted Nokia was entering into laptop PC business. The news story was even titled Nokia considering entering laptop industry.

What exactly did Kallasvuo say? He was interviewed by a reporter at a prime time current affairs-show broadcast by Yle, the Finnish national broadcaster.
Reporter: Will Nokia make mini mobile PCs some day?
Kallasvuo: Never say never. Of course, we are actively looking at this business opportunity among other opportunities.

Kallasvuo simply said netbook PCs are an opportunity among many other opportunities. There are hundreds of managers in a high-tech company like Nokia who do nothing else than scan the markets and plan for new businesses. 99.99 percent (a rough guestimation) of the business plans never go anywhere. There are thousands of managers in a high-tech company like Nokia who believe it should instantly enter the netbook PC business.

Yet, it doesn't mean that Nokia would get involved in PC business. It is unlikely that Nokia would want to get involved in such a low-margin business. The thing that triggered the speculation about Nokia's PC business was that Kallasvuo didn't say no, Nokia is not going to market netbook PCs.

Nokia may already have a netbook in its hands.

A loose definition for a netbook is that it is a small laptop PC whose screen size is below 12 inches. Typical size is for a popular netbook from Acer, Asus or HP is 8 or 10 inches.

Nokia has already made available a handheld tablet product that is not far off from a netbook, the N810. The Nokia N810 has a full qwerty keyboard and a touch screen. It is powered by Linux operating system, called Maemo. The device has been designed for multimedia, messaging and web access. It is not ideal for word processing, spreadsheets or slide presentations, but few netbook PCs are. The Nokia N810 screen size is only 4 inches which doesn't quite qualify it as a PC.

Yet, the N810 Internet tablet resembles a netbook PC so much that it would be easy for Nokia to use the Maemo software and create a larger device. It wouldn't make sense to compete against HP, Acer, Dell, or Asus with a similar product than they already have, but further developing the Internet/multimedia tablet concept would make sense.

You can find a review of the N810 Internet tablet here.