Peet,

I think you are missing the point. The point isn't about having both on the market, but about if having a tablet at this point makes sense businesswise.

While the previous Maemo tablets have had their following, they really haven't had much of an impact beyond the geek community. So, Nokia went where they could get more visibility: the cell phone market. So far, demand has been higher than expected, and at least in Europe, they get some visibility from cell companies. I know it got me interested, where I've previously passed on closeouts on the previous tablets.

Riddle me this: Considering the current state of Maemo and available applications, do you think a stripped down N900 with no cell and no hardware keyboard could compete with the iPod Touch at this time? I don't think so. Software leaves something to be desired. So does the built in media player. The only thing the platform has going for it right now for the general consumer is web browsing. That really isn't enough to go with Nokia over Apple.

Course, there is a difference of opinion on what people want for a tablet. The OP is saying something like the iPod Touch. Many on this forum were hoping for a beefier 810.

In any case, I think the OP is likely wrong that the N900 means that Nokia has abandoned tablets for good. For Nokia, it seems clear that Maemo 6 is a milestone for the OS to be more consumer friendly and it is likely that there are perhaps bigger things planned for that release. The N900 is just a step further in that direction.

I for one refuse to admit that I am missing the point, since it is MY point of view, not Nokia's. I want a tablet for my sake, I never said that it is bad for Nokia to choose to not make one. A phone makes perfect sense -- just seeing how this forum exploded with new users in the last couple of months is telling enough what the general population out there is after...

But, once the N900 has become more mainstream, having a "bigger brother" with similar inwards and focused more on media and less on connectivity may capture additional customers -- those that are happy with their blackberries or E72 or ericssons...

PS. Going back to the OP, the "ipod touch eclipses the iphone"... Of course it would, offering almost everything the iphone has, at five times lower price... even the apple herd could figure it out after a couple of years...

My only reservation abut the excellent post #49 is that it only looks at the situation as it is right now.

Apple created the ipod. Then the iphone. Then they realised they could do the easy bit and make an 'iphone without the phone' - and look! they had a tablet.

Nokia brought maemo from the opopsite direction. As a maker of phones, they set about making something that was solely a tablet. And it worked. and there was a market for it. Next the wanted to see if they could put a phone onto it too. And the answer has been a qualified yes. There's a lot of phone functions missing.

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.

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.

Let Nokia develop its platform first.

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.

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?

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.

"Between planes, airports, and hotels, a WiFi connection is usually always available to her. "

But most people DONT spend their entire lives in major transport hubs.

Most people spend most of their lives away from wi-fi connections (and heck, even within my own flat I have trouble getting a wi-fi signal in the bedroom).

Without some kind of cellular option you will never ever have an always-on connectivity or anything close to it. You might not like the business models that cellular companies use, but you cannot deny that cellular networks have a far more comprehensive coverage of the world.

Because of cellular I can connect when I'm on a bus for example, which is impossible with wi-fi.

This idea that somehow removing cellular would bring us better connectivity is lunacy.

Removing cellular (and adding BT DUN client) will give a much better connectivity - connectivity with CDMA networks, connectivity with UMTS networks using the 850MHz band, etc.

You don't need to remove cellular to add a DUN client.

We are paying a lot for this cellular in money, weight, design choices. It makes no sense to buy this device to use it as a tablet.

IMHO all this discussion is biased by the concept of "tablet" which most members of this forum are keen on.

Actually, the iPod Touch is not marketed (nor bought) as an Internet Tablet, but as a pocket gaming console. Its competitors are the PSP and the Nintendo DSi, not Nokia ITs. In this article Steve Jobs explains Apple's strategy for the iPod Touch.

And the reason of the success is that, beyond a lot of good-quality and low-price entertainment titles, the iPod Touch has also a good mobile browser, good media player capabilities, VOIP suppor through Skype or Fring, built-in PIM functions and a large number of utility and reference applications. So the real selling point of the iPod Touch is that it is the cheapest device to access iPhone OS software ecosystem.

That's why a new cellular-less Maemo device would not be a real contender to the iPod Touch, even at the same price.

So IMHO Nokia made a good move with Maemo 5 to compete in the high-end market segment first, in order to attract as many professional software developers as possible. If Maemo does not achieve a solid software catalog, it will be crushed by iPhone and Android no matter how good the hardware Nokia will be able to produce.

more like its marketed as a pmp that also can game.