Nokia’s CEO claims that the company is ‘actively looking’ to get into the computer market, possibly through creating its own family of mobile computers.
On the face of it, and given the success Nokia has been enjoying in the smartphones and mobile Internet services markets, this seems to be a canny move. It would also underline Nokia’s vision of a ubiquitous mobile computing environment, where the boundaries between phones and computers are blurred.
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo let slip this information in the course of an interview with Finnish TV broadcaster YLE this week. As such, the company is not yet publicly commenting on its plans in this regard, so it’s not yet known whether Nokia will use a version of Symbian, the OS used in its very popular Nseries and Eseries ‘converged’ devices, or whether it will build a new PC-centric OS.
I’m betting on the former, mainly because Nokia has invested a lot of time and money on Symbian in recent years, and many of its partners are also working with Symbian on future projects. But also, I’m sure that Nokia will want to offer a seamless experience for those who want to have their Symbian-powered phones working in tandem with a Symbian-powered Nokia computer.
What form factor will the putative new Nokia device adopt? Laptop, notebook, netbook, MID (mobile Internet device)? The notebook seems the likeliest candidate, as it fits more with Nokia’s slim smartphone design ethic and the ample processing power of such devices means they are equally capable of providing computing, web access, and (potentially) phone services. The newly-forged relationship with Qualcomm will probably help speed the development process, too.
Netbooks? No, probably not. The market is growing fast, but is likely to remain small due to the limited multi-functionality of such devices.
The notebook market offers greater growth potential, although it is rather crowded already, with Asia’s Acer and Lenovo growing rapidly at present. A Nokia offering will need to offer some exceptional design and technical innovations if it can attract users from the rival camps. A 3G broadband unit, with voice telephony, perhaps, given network operators’ interest in offering such devices to broadband customers? Hmmm… Given the relative cheapness of such devices, profit margins might be low, though: more so, in the case of netbooks.
A final thought: what of Nokia’s young Internet Tablet family, a set of devices that recently suffered the demise of a WiMAX-flavoured model? Sales figures aren’t known, but they do have their followers. By committing to notebooks, will Nokia now dispense with the rest of the Tablets?
Tags: 3G, Acer, Eseries, Internet Tablet, laptop, Lenovo, mobile broadband, mobile computer, mobile device, mobile handset, mobile internet, mobile Internet device, mobile phone, netbook, Nokia, notebook, Nseries, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Qualcomm, Symbian, wimax, wireless broadband, YLE
I think that Nokia building Notebooks with their own operating system would be a road to nowhere and a financial disaster for the firm.
So they are going to threaten head-on Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo and HP for example - do you seriously think that Nokia has the where-with-all to start and take on that war in commodity markets when they are struggling to find a place and win battles in their new value-added markets? They are already spread too thin.
Unless they plan to build from scratch a whole new generation of users on their new Notebook (say in Africa or India) they don’t have a hope in hell.
Let’s just try to make phones first that have better than impoverished usability, and that may mean ditching Symbian for a start.
Hello Walter
Thanks for your comments.
I do believe that Nokia is serious about at least dipping its toe into the waters of the notebook field. Why else allow this news to break?
That said, I’m about as convinced of its likely success as you are, particularly regarding the use of Symbian - or a variant - as an OS.
Nevertheless, from the perspective of the average consumer at large, either resigned to or even oblivious of the shortcomings of Symbian (heaven knows there are millions of them as Nokia handset shipment figures demonstrate!), a Nokia notebook would be just another brand to choose from on the high steet. A well known and high profile brand at that.
Such consumers might even include myself, needing little more than a very cheap computer with basic word and spreadsheet features and maybe wireless broadband access. It doesn’t have to be fancy and neither does the price.
So, it may not sell in numbers to give Acer, Dell and the others sleepless nights and, yes, it might make for a financially messy disaster story if Nokia were to aggressively chase a market of it clearly has little or no understanding.
But, given their commitment to Symbian and well publicised desire to converge the computing and mobile communications fields as far as possible, it does make sense for Nokia to at least contemplate becoming a PC player.
Timing is key, though, and Nokia may be reacting in a knee-jerk fashion in response to heightened competition in the smartphone sector, as well as the need to provide as many channels to market for its investments there (Symbian) as well as in Internet services (N-Gage, Qt, Ovi, etc), rather than going into the market because it feels it genuinely has something compelling and innovative to sell.