I fully understand that Nokia chose Windows for their first netbook, but I'm going to get worried if this is where it stops. There's just way too much competition in the PC market, and Nokia needs to differentiate itself. That doesn't need to happen today, but it needs to happen soon.

Looking at this from a Free software perspective, I think Nokia is one of the only companies that can bring Linux considerable market share. Google may have been able to, but they produced a crippled phone OS and a brain dead framebuffer web browser they want to call a netbook OS so they can lock people into their cloud services.

Looking at this from a business perspective, I think Linux is the platform Nokia can use to break Microsoft's and Apple's stranglehold on the computing market. If it's not broken before the full versions of OS X and Windows can run on smartphones, it's game over for Maemo and Symbian. Nokia will become just another Asus.

What I'd do is, yes, launch that Windows netbook now, but think of it as something like S60. You need to have it to deal with inertia, but that's it.

Then, release the N900. Next, a bigger tablet running Maemo to start eating at netbook market share. Grow Maemo market share rapidly using Nokia's phone dominance, and you suddenly have a Linux interface that close to 50% of the market is actually familiar with.

THEN, start selling larger laptops and even desktop computers running KDE 4.9 customized to look close enough to Maemo. Developers have Qt all the way from 40 euro Symbian phones to the hottest gaming PC:s, Ovi is the number one software source, and Nokia becomes larger than Microsoft on all platforms.


...or at least that's what I hope will happen, because I bought shares in anticipation of the N900 launch