The Finnish phone giant is gearing up to enter the tablet race, looking to contend with the Apple iPad and other tech giants.

The Street: Nokia Aims a Tablet at Apple: Exclusive

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Nokia is out to prove again that it can be late, wrong and yet still willing to stick its neck out in areas where growth could be.

Nokia is working with suppliers and design manufacturers on a touch-screen tablet to have available as early as this fall, according to Rodman Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar, who is close to Nokia's technology partners. Nokia declined to comment.

The move, if true, would put Nokia head-to-head with tablet makers like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Google and Dell, to name a few. The plunge into tablets would also mark yet another attempt by the top mobile phone maker to develop Internet devices for a market beyond cell phones.

"Nokia hasn't fielded any breakaway products in years," says Kumar. "This is a new window, and Nokia had better be at the starting gate if and when the product category takes off," Kumar added.

[..]

Nokia's tablet roots

Nokia, oddly, was a tablet pioneer in the early 2000s with its N770 handheld Internet device. The product failed to take off. Then last year, Nokia flopped in the netbook market with its Booklet 3G.

But this time around, Nokia has regrouped around a new operating system called MeeGo and a partnership with chip giant Intel.

"Getting a strong Intel backing here could be an important advantage," says MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen, who sees the Nokia tablet as part of an array of mobile computers.

Nokia, which has been watching Apple and Research In Motion (RIMM) run away with its smartphone business, can't afford to let this opportunity go by. Like the jump into netbooks with the Booklet, Nokia has shown a recent eagerness to respond to new markets. "I feel they have to do this, or risk falling behind in the category," says Kumar.

Pricing and timing are critical if Nokia has any hope for success in tablets.

Nokia needs to have a tablet ready for sale in time for the back-to-school computer buying surge and well before the holidays, says Kumar.

With Apple's iPad starting at $500, Nokia has to aim lower -- at what will likely be a moving target.

"The problem here is that the pricing of tablets is likely to drop at a furious pace over the next four quarters," says MKM's Kuittinen. "Nokia needs to get its products out fast and ramp up the production rapidly or it's going to be tough to play catch-up."

Nokia's challenge isn't just on the hardware front.

Apple's iPhone software runs the iPad, while Google's Android and Chrome operating systems will run new tablets from a host of big tech brands, and Microsoft is likely to put Windows 7 to work on its tablets. That leaves Nokia and its still-evolving MeeGo software as a distant and unknown contender.

Nokia faces long odds of finishing in the money in tablets, says Kumar.

"I'm not holding my breath on this one," Kumar said.

(Edited for brev.. sanity)

Personally I feel that Nokia has made bigger (a lot bigger) mistakes than this potentially planned "tablet" idea, but...

if the device will be:

• Only ipad-sized model avilable (i.e. still no pocketable models) and - knowing Nokia - thicker
• Only uses Meego-partner Intel's x86 platform rather than ARM
• Priced similarly to N900 (i.e. higher than competing devices in the Android ecosystem)

then Nokia has more issues to deal with than simply being late to the market they actually helped create with Maemo and 770/N800/N810 a few years ago.

Thanks for putting the (almost) original text into you post.

There already are however posts about this tablet rumour.

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone here. Meego will be a pretty decent solution for a tablet and I'm sure Nokia can gain some traction with something like this outside of the US. Meego would probably scale much better than the iPhone OS on the iPad with the ability to run full linux applications on top of a 100% finger friendly UI environment.

I don't see anything in the rumor that says the tablet will actually be iPad sized. My feeling is that the iPad is too big, but I don't care whether I can actually pocket my tablet.

Well they were referring to an ipad competitor rather than iphone... indeed it doesn't sound very pocketable.

I feel that this ipad + imitation fad would leave room for smaller physical formats too, but maybe Apple + imitators know best what everybody/market wants?

Also this piece by The Street, with Finnish analyst's comments no less, wrote about Nokia's plans more as a fact rather than rumour.

Obviously I can't vouch for any of this, therefore my "if..." comments to it.

Personally I think tablet computers will prove to be a fad.

I had a samsung q1 years ago, but it fails to fall into a need catagory, only thing I found it really good for was watching movies on.....

Twelve months time and I bet there are a lot of tablets on ebay, from many different manufacturers.

personally I hope they don't make it with intel atom chip.

If it was me I would use dual core arm cortex a-9 is possible.
if not single core arm coretx a-9.
if not then arm cortex a-8 running at 1ghz.
due to price restrcitions
prob around 8-10 inches with 960x540 resolution the absolute minimum. 1336x768 if possible.
capacitive multi touch
Running meego, and with full access to ovi store.

And for about 450 dollars if possible.

And then try to make the next meego phone with around the same specs this way dev know if it'll work on the slate it'll work on the meego phone.
except the phone will prob be 4.3 inches with 800x480 res.

A boy can dream can't he. lol

a) F YEAH! 'bout time, Nokia

b) They better get a f'n move on! The iPad is here, the 9-11" Android tablets are being announced and delivered in the next few months. Nokia should have been the FIRST player on this field (like they were with pocketable MIDs), and they had better not be the LAST.

c) I want:

• ARM, not Atom ... 1GHz is good.
• Meego/Maemo, not Windows 7 (if they did Atom), not Symbian.
• 1-2GB RAM
• at least 4GB storage ... though, 32GB, like the N900, would be sweet
• 3G option (and, having it be like the ICD Gemini, that can do SMS/MMS and Voice, would be cool)
• 10" 1024x600 or 1366x768 would be fine ... but 1280x720 would be ideal, to me.
• PixelQi display would be PERFECT.
• Must have both USB Host/OTG ports for keyboard/mouse/storage/etc ... AND USB client for charging/syncing/etc.
• DVI-I out would be preferred, but HDMI out would be ok.
• Portrait and Landscape mode virtual keyboard ... with Swype support
• Generic open ePUB reader would be great.... and so would a "Kindle for MeeGo" app.
• Amazon MP3 store support.

I could probably come up with more items later... but that's a good start.

I saw something earlier that seemed to indicate one of the upcoming tablets will have both capacitive multi-touch and resistive stylus support. Not sure which one it was, though ... but that would be awesome.