CEO: Nokia Considers Entering Laptop Industry
wired.com
wired.com
I highlighted word normal because I'm not asking for a miracle or Star Wars grade technology, just the kind of quality displays that used to be the norm on $1K+ business class laptops 2-3 years ago, but slowly got replaced by ugly, cheap, unevenly lit, 6-bit color, often glossy junk [yes, even on macbooks]
In addition to my MBP's built-in display I have a 5 year old 17" Samsung hooked up as secondary monitor and comparing the same photo on 2008 MBP vs 2003 Samsung depresses me.
The whole mini-Laptop thing (which I'm guessing Nokia is looking at) is just another trend that will die off soon. It was a trend about a decade back with the Toshiba Libretto and will die out as another fad once people (again) realize how the mini-laptop is a failed compromise between a full laptop and desktop.
Now a "slate" computer (like an 8.5x11" iPhone) would be sweet, so long as it had a quality touch-OS.
Wrong. The Libretto was never a huge success, but netbooks are. What's happening now is not just another trend that will die off soon.
"By the end of 2008, Asustek had sold 5 million netbooks, and other brands together had sold 10 million. (Europe in particular has gone mad for netbooks; sales there are eight times higher than in the US.) In a single year, netbooks had become 7 percent of the world's entire laptop market. Next year it will be 12 percent."
From: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/17-03/mf_netb...
That's billions of dollars and several years of millions of people buying these things, using them, and continuing to buy them. There's a lot of trends making this happen, including widespread wifi, cost, and so much of our computing living in the cloud now, all of which are forecast to accelerate.
You may not like them personally, but these netbooks are here to stay.
Agreed on the Communicator/N800 fad, though.
What's next?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujitsu_Siemens_Computers Excerpt:
"The origins of the company can be traced back to the merger of the PC-divisions of the Finnish Nokia and the Swedish Ericsson in the mid 1980s when Ericsson PCs were known for their ergonomics and bright colors.
In 1991 Nokia Data was sold to the British International Computers Limited (ICL). Later ICL merged with Fujitsu.
The Nokia MikroMikko line of compact desktop computers continued to be produced at the Kilo factories in Espoo, Finland.
Components, including motherboards and Ethernet network adapters were manufactured locally, until production was moved to Taiwan. Internationally the MikroMikko line was marketed by Fujitsu as the ErgoPro."
See also MikroMikko: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MikroMikko
Q: "Will Nokia produce a mini-laptop of their own some day?" A (Nokia-CEO Kallasvuo): "Never say never. Of course we are also actively looking into this business opportunity."
Source: http://areena.yle.fi/toista?id=1923984 (in Finnish)