Originally Posted by Texrat

I got some feedback on tablet marketing today, and although it wasn't *official*, I think it's a good indicator nonetheless of the corporate thinking.

I can't go into details, but suffice to say there was some logic to the motivation behind keeping the tablet hype low key (for now). But I get the feeling from the community that the prevailing fear is that lack of overt, large-scale marketing for the device equates to half-@$$ corporate support for the product line. That it's doomed to an nGage fate.

I have to confess I had the same fear for a while, but I've been given good reason to believe Nokia is in the tablet business for the long haul. What the company is hoping for is patience from the early adopters as certain elements are retooled.

So my optimism is rekindled a bit. BUT-- that doesn't mean there isn't room for immediate improvement. The good news is that lessons are being learned. That said, I don't think the tablets will be hyped in the exact same way as iPods and iPhones, and to a certain degree they shouldn't IMO. Nokia just needs to better define the target customer(s), get the message out, and follow through on promises quicker.

Originally Posted by namtastic

Thanks for sharing this.

Agreed, the N800 doesn't need to be successful at the levels of the iPods to still be a successful product for Nokia. It just needs to be successful in the volumes they want and with the people they want, and as far as *we* know they're surpassed their original expectations. Just as before, the problem is the lack of transparency in letting us know these things.

(I think for us Americans, in our hurry hurry trial-and-error culture, not beating the reigning champion product usually means the competitor is about to disappear for good -- since the ITs suffer constant comparisons with the iPods, there's a lot of anxiety as a result. I just don't know if those comparisons are avoidable these days, regardless of the marketing used.)