Thread: "Surging iPod touch eclipses the iPhone" ... while Nokia stupidly abandons tablets!
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Peet is offline Peet
2010-01-03 , 12:27
Posts: 302 | Thanked: 254 times | Joined on Oct 2007
#54
Originally Posted by RevdKathy View Post
So right now the emphasis is on making the platform support a phone. Because everyone knows Maemo can run a tablet,. And right now the new device is one with telephony, so they can get that bit working.
If the Maemo platform is strategically important to Nokia there's no obstacle to keeping the SIM-less tablet market going for developers and customers alike. The N900's tablet functions are already battle-tested; improving its telephony functions is something Nokia engineers are doing within their secret darkrooms anyway. Yet lot of the internet and media functionality depends on 3rd party developers and generally open-source apps which are being patched up and improved from many different directions. All they need is hardware to run the current Maemo OS.

There is absolutely nothing stopping those who want a tablet using one. And personally, I think it's [extremely likely that step 5 will include both sorts of devices. Indeed, possibly lots of devices with a range of hardware specs for different target audiences much as symbian does.
If Nokia will indeed release tablet(s) in the future then why the long gap and no information whatsoever? Wrt. price and screen size the N900 is hardly the ideal tablet developer attraction, and what hardware features should the developers target on the not-even-rumoured future Nokia tablet? Keyboard? D-pad? etc.

I still believe the main point stands: Having a phone-tablet (N900) needs not exclude having a more affordable phoness "companion" tablet based on the same updated hardware design.

Being extremely phone-centric has already blindsided Nokia in a major way by the arrival of iphone and later Android and the plethora of ARM-armed touchscreen smartphones. Now they're surrendering the "companion" tablet market (and many developers) voluntarily after pioneering the platform (which, when mature, would help the S40 and Symbian sales!) and after bringing up the tablet usability from 40% to 60% to 80% currently?

Let Nokia develop its platform first.
That may not be ideal for attracting developers though, especially open-source and tablet-oriented software developers. We know that the next version of Maemo will be QT-centric, but that's about it. What kind of hardware will it run on?

I'm sure there will be developers targetting Maemo 6 a year from now, but at this rate I doubt Nokia is maximizing Maemo's potential to attract them. Or maybe it's all an intentional shakedown and part of the QT migration, but it still doesn't asnwer any questions about the lack of tablet hardware now or in the future.