maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - CNET: The $199 tablet according to Freescale

	johnkzin	2010-01-05 , 15:12
	Posts: 1,878 \| Thanked: 646 times \| Joined on Sep 2007 @ San Jose, CA	#16

Originally Posted by Peet

How on earth could you miss all the connectivity features in the N8x0-series!?

I didn't miss them at all. I just don't consider that to be a "connected device". A "connected device", clearly (in the way I was using it) is one that has it's own mobile radio, and not just wifi + bluetooth + USB.

The N810WiMAX was a connected device. The N810 was not.

I've certainly used those voice features often, either via WIFI or tethered

As did I.

I've occasionally promoted the continued development of a "cellphone companion device"

That's no longer being ahead of the curve. That's fairly well behind the curve. Everyone (Apple, Archos, Cowon, Viliv, blah blah blah) has one. Some have better connectivity choices than the others (ex: the iPod Touch only works with wifi tethering), but the basic "doesn't have a mobile radio" aspect is still the same.

The single top-end N900 model with its still somewhat immature cellular telephony features doesn't pose significant threat to the hordes of Symbian developers who are being pushed and pulled towards Nokia's emerging QT-based Symbian environment.

The currently most powerful (by far) Symbian lobby within Nokia may imagine the higher-end features of an affordable Maemo-based "companion device" as a threat both to their own higher-end Symbian models' margins and to all those Symbian developers who can't deploy their QT-wares on Maemo until 2012 at earliest.

So instead of cannibalizing some stagnant Symbian market share in favour of developer and userbase momentum for Maemo, Nokia is conceding ground on both accounts to other Linux-based mid- and upper-range newcomers, including Android.

Sure, this is just a theory and not an all-encompassing or omniscient one at that, but the upcoming Cortex-8 tablets (affordable, despite not having Nokia's economies-of-scale?) seem all destined to run something else than Maemo.

I'm not sure how ANY of that is relevant to what I said.

Where are the emerging markets right now?

4"-5" devices that don't at least have the option of a 3G radio ... is not one of them. That market hasn't been "emerging" for over a year. Right now, it's both saturated, and has a couple of big players. Nokia had a chance at controlling that market, by being the first one there ... but they pissed it away. Trying to re-introduce themselves to that market, and take it back over ... probably a wasted effort. It's sad, and it might be nice (as you say) to maintain some presence there ... but it's not worth a HUGE effort. And it's certainly not going to be as big a revenue source as if they had kept their early dominance.

6"-11" tablets that have e-reader capabilities, tie ins with media sources for that e-reader content, and flexible software capabilities ... that's the emerging market. They wouldn't be first, nor the first to make a big splash, but if they had been on the ball, they could have been the first to make a machine that was both a quite useful and handy e-reader AND a general purpose mobile computer. Think about the B&N Nook, only instead of it being 2 small single-purpose screens running Android, think of it as a single PixelQi screen based Maemo tablet (with, or without, the WWAN module for data). That's where Nokia should have been 3 months ago (announcing and in development with PixelQi and B&N; obviously they couldn't have shipped it until a month or so ago). And they've only got a few more months (at best) to get there.

After that, what's the next emerging market? It still wont be '4"-5" tablets that only have wifi and bluetooth' ... that ship sailed. But whatever it is, Nokia better figure it out.

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