Rumours have been circulating for quite a while now about the possibility of Nokia moving into the Netbook market and by the looks of things this could be moving a step closer to becoming a reality.
When asked about the possibility of Nokia producing a Netbook, Nokia’s Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo recently confirmed on Finnish TV that Nokia were “actively” looking at the opportunity.
Reading between the words, ‘actively looking’ certainly means a lot more than just thinking about it.
“We don’t have to look even for five years from now to see that what we know as a cellphone and what we know as a PC are in many ways converging” said Kallasvuo.
“Today we have hundreds of millions of people who are having their first Internet experience on the phone. This is a good indication.”
Alright so Kallasvuo never actually came right out and said that Nokia were going to produce a Netbook but there are other reports on the go that would signify that they are.
Digitimes recently reported that Nokia is currently in talks with Taiwan notebook makers and EMS companies regarding its plans to move into the Netbook market.
According to the sources Nokia was considering a “joint design manufacture (JDM) strategy” and indicated that Compal Electronics and Foxconn Electronics were the two most likely potential partners to produce the Netbooks for Nokia.
More recent reports on The Street news site indicate that Nokia has chosen to go with Foxconn and were closing a deal on Foxconn leasing a former Nokia manufacturing facility in Texas.
The speculation is that they chose this company because they were taking into consideration the time and cost involved in producing a Netbook as it would take them longer and it would cost more for them to do it themselves.
Foxconn is one of the world’s biggest Notebook contract manufacturers and already produce a number of well known products.
As Kallasvuo said himself, the gap between Netbooks and Mobile Phones is definitely closing. This is true, so it would actually make a lot of sense for a Mobile Phone company like Nokia to take full advantage of the current wave of interest in low cost Netbooks.
Nokia are the world’s largest mobile phone company and already have a strong distribution network for their mobiles and could use this to help launch their own Netbook.
So no it won’t come as a surprise to see Nokia Netbooks available in the not too distant future.
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