Thread: Future of Internet Tablets
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chlettn is offline chlettn
2008-11-04 , 20:17
Posts: 137 | Thanked: 138 times | Joined on Sep 2007
#278
Originally Posted by Jerome View Post
First, Nokia can generate hype. They have generated quite some attention about some of their phones.
Quite some attention? Yeah, definitely. The N95 launch was huge, sadly the market entry was a bit overshadowed.

A iPhone like media frenzy? Not really.

Originally Posted by Jerome View Post
Second, one can make quite a lot of money without hype.
Yeah, that I don't doubt for a second. Nokia doesn't live off a single iconic product, but a myriad of different offerings that cover the pretty much the whole market, from the lowest-end all the way up to the feature beast...

Originally Posted by Jerome View Post
It is just that maemo is not pushed by their marketing department.
I don't think Nokia ever saw the tablets as mass market devices, and comments about how they were actually taken by surprise by the N800's success confirms that feeling. Spending a lot of money to advertise niche devices isn't a great idea, especially not if the devices are (like they kinda say themselves with their 5-step plan) still rather experimental. Better spend the money for R&D imho...

Originally Posted by Jerome View Post
Really this is about recognising that the whole picture is changing. Lucky us, or maemo would finished as the sharp zaurus has. Nokia made exactly the same mistakes. If the picture wasn't changing, I would not be hopeful at all. But it is.
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with the announced upcoming changes/new things in both hardware and software. It seems the focus is shifting towards a more mass-market approach.

Originally Posted by Jerome View Post
Maybe the simple question is: "what do non geek people do with a tablet device? "
It's not quite that simple imho, but I think Nokia spends a lot of money and effort to find out exactly that. My guess: casual web surfing, watching videos, listening to music, emailing, IM, Skype, reading PDFs, navigating. Basically, the standard out-of-the-box stuff...

Originally Posted by Jerome View Post
The interesting question is just: where would the Net be in a year or two?
I don't think anybody really knows that. I guess a lot of start-ups will fall victim to the current financial crisis, so only the more established web 2.0 services will survive longer-term. But the next big thing after all the social stuff? Who knows...location-aware services will be big, services like Qik/Flixwagon/etc. might become fairly big, cloud apps might well become huge and make the browser the absolutely most important app on any device too...but other than that? I really have no idea.