Indeed. It seems incredible that at this point Nokia is pulling back to smaller devices when everyone else are doing the opposite. Here's still hoping we'll get the pocketable Nokia tablet in near future. I really want to get a worthy successor for my N800

In the photos the OS looks kinda like Moblin. Maybe they mean "Android or Moblin". It doesn't matter, the OEM will define the OS, not freescale. And even more importantly "reference" design is much like "concept car", you can't buy one.

Basically, Nokia was well ahead of the curve with the 770. They basically made the first MID, before anyone knew what a MID was. The N800 and N810 moved that concept forward, and then, right when the rest of the market was catching up, putting a label on the general concept, and starting to release devices ... Nokia abandoned that market.

What I wish Nokia would do is: get back ahead of the curve, instead of being behind it. IMO, they basically missed the netbook curve, coming out with too-generic too-late. They need to get back to doing it first, and doing it better.

I know some would like to see new 4"-5" tablets ... but I'm not really convinced that there's an important market there. a 4" tablet phone, sure. A 4" connected tablet? could be (esp. with Skype, Google Voice, and generic SIP capabilities). A 4" non-connected tablet (like the N8x0)? no.

Where I think Nokia can, and should, be is that the mid-range tablet is still young enough that they could do something amazing. Maemo on a 9" or 10" tablet would be outstanding, if done correctly. But, the window for "doing it [nearly] first, and doing it better" is basically "within the next few months". After that, they'll be just another "johnny come lately" to the crowd. And, unlike the 770 and N800, if they wait too long, they might not beat Apple to the table.

The reason might be that they're planning on bringing a whole range of devices with Harmattan. If that were the case, they would have to also test the phone aspects of Maemo to get it right, so it would explain the smaller size of N900. With Harmattan they should have all the experience and pieces together to make great devices for both phone and tablet use. It could be that the current tablet hype just caught them off guard. I'm hoping there's some rational plan behind all this rather than just a screw-up

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

I've certainly used those voice features often, either via WIFI or tethered via my mid-range Nokia's GPRS/EDGE connection (chose not to use 3G due pricing and coverage), sometimes in very remote foreign places.

I've occasionally promoted the continued development of a "cellphone companion device" i.e simply a hardware update and refresh of the N8x0 models which, with faster hardware and evolved software, would be even more ideal companions to the existing mobile users, but the main reason why Nokia has abandoned the non-phone tablets may well be political.

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 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.

As did I.

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.

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.

Eh? You stated your belief that there isn't demand for an updated 4"-5" easily tetherable and media-savvy internet tablet unless it has an integrated 3G radio.

I pointed to another thread where the Apple iPod (no 3G) is shown to be in fact quite popular indeed and where I explain how Nokia's non-cellular (but still better connected) internet tablets would be useful for both customers and the Maemo platform as an alternative to the pricier top-end (N900) Maemo phone class.

Then, rather than simply taking your "lack of demand" argument as gospel, I speculated why Nokia has chosen not to bring the modernized "companion tablet" to market at all. (Symbian politics)

Can you see ANY of the relevance now?

I do apologize if the conclusion wasn't what you expected, but this debate does also involve 3rd party "competitors" who are working on bringing modern tablet hardware and software to market, with "3G optional", but unfortunately Maemo doesn't feature in that equation any longer.

Btw. it isn't always about being the first to jump into emerging markets but also identifying user cases and both catering to and sticking by them. A little marketing also helps sometimes.

Nokia (and Maemo) owned the internet tablet market (as opposed to Apple's closed garden) - even without doing any of the above (apart from pioneering...) - until 2008 when they chose to euthanize the whole skunkworks "companion device" category instead of bringing it to date.

And good luck hunting for the elusive next "emerging market" wave with Nokia. These days they tend to ride the early wave before jumping off instead of sticking around to see where they might ride or steer towards.

Modular. THANK YOU

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

I'm not saying that there's no demand for any such devices. I'm saying that there isn't enough demand/room for "yet another such device". Nokia left that market about 2 years ago, and trying to get back into it would be pointless. They don't offer anything (except to former N8x0 users) that would attract market share with such a device.

Between Archos and Apple, and a few others (including Linux based devices), I don't see there being much hope for Nokia to break in, offer value, and therefore win market share. If they had stayed in from the start, and played that market like they wanted to win it, sure. But they didn't. They pissed it away. And the gap that they left has been filled.

Yup. I agree with johnkzin though (sadly).