Nokia lands netbook

Posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009. Filed under Technology.

Nokia surprised the market this week by announcing a netbook device that it will launch soon. The Finnish mobile company claims the Booklet 3G will deliver 12 hours of battery life, run Windows 7 and include all of the features one would expect from a modern netbook-slash-laptop. It’ll also include Nokia applications, such as Ovi Maps – and has a built-in GPS, which is unusual for such a device.

As smartphones become more capable and netbooks become smaller the Booklet 3G resembles a strategy from Nokia that aligns well to the evolution of the market. Nokia has also recently forged agreements with Microsoft and Intel designed to keep it ahead of the pack, although is has been lagging on the smartphone side where it must contend with the likes of RIM (Blackberry), Apple and others.

Nokia’s timing is also impeccable if Apple does, in fact, plan on releasing a tablet-slash-netbook device soon. And when that happens it’s on like Donkey Kong.

The included video shows off more features of the Booklet 3G. Looks decent. I’ve contacted Nokia to establish availability for South Africa but the company had no further details at time of writing. The biggest question, of course, is in price. And here Nokia will have to tread carefully if it intends to capture any form of market share in the hotly contested netbook arena.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

blog comments powered by Disqus

:: Ads

:: About

Simon Dingle is a technology journalist, writer, broadcaster and professional speaker based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He compiles the technology pages for Finweek magazine and contributes to Fin24.com and hosts the ZA Tech Show podcast and (Tech)5 on 5FM. Read more...

::Twitter

Simon Dingle on Facebook

::Tag cloud

::Engage