Tuesday 25 August 2009

Convergence as Nokia launches a netbook

(By Richard Holway 7.00pm Tuesday 25th Aug 09) Yesterday – see Smartphones rule as Dell enters the market - I told you about Dell (until recently one of the world’s leading suppliers of PCs) launching a smartphone. Today, I can tell you about Nokia (the world’s leading supplier of smartphones) launching a PC. To be more precise, it’s a netbook – or what Nokia calls a ‘Booklet 3G’.

It’s Windows 7 based, nice aluminium case, weighs 1.25kg, claimed 12 hour battery life, GPS, HD ready, lovely ‘Apple-like’ keyboard etc. That’s a pretty tasty spec! Its USP (apparently) is its ‘internal mobile broadband card with SIM’. Indeed, exactly what you would expect from Nokia. Pricing will be announced on 2nd Sept 09 but Nokia’s buying power might make this an extremely competitive offering.

The netbook market is getting pretty crowded but Nokia does have an impressive customer base and associated distribution network. So the ‘conventional’ computer manufacturers should be rightly concerned about this move.

On top of that, we are eagerly anticipating the Apple iTablet – possibly in Sept. I believe this could be another mega success and could yet again change the whole market; in particular for netbooks and ebooks. Yet another reason for those conventional manufacturers to be even more worried.

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