Nokia Tablets to Save Nokia
Nokia remains the largest cellphone company in the world, but its smartphones... well... they are terrible. Do you know anyone rocking the latest Nokia N-series? Maybe the N98? No? No one?
Yeah - thats because they are barely even sold over here, largely because the operating system is about as up-to-date and attractive as Windows Mobile. Nokia phones have been stuck in a pre-iPhone world, and couldn't break out.
Nokia even paid $1 billion to buy Symbian, the company which makes the software for Nokia phones (and some other companies as well before that). But symbian was unable to make an effective modern operating system, which is why as of today a little known science project of Nokia's will step up to try and save the company.
By this I mean Nokia's line of internet tablets, one of which I bought for my brother a few years ago, and I loved it so much I got one for myself. For their time (came out in 2005) they were revolutionary little guys running a touch-friendly version of Linux known as Maemo. They were popular really only among the geek class (its was true to Linux - you could adjust everything, but even installing programs could be a pain) but were very powerful for their time. But really, it was always just a small sideline for Nokia - a company that measures major product lines by billions of units sold. Even the latest and greatest, and the first to be a cellphone as well as a internet tablet (though even mine has a mic and a speaker - so you can hold it to your ear when using it to make Skype calls - pretty cool really) was released as a sideline project for Nokia and was stated to not be for general consumption.
Well no longer. Nokia has now said that all new high-end smartphones will be based off MeeGo (nee Maemo) and that Symbian will be used to power cheap low-end smartphones, while featurephones all but disappear from everywhere but the developing world. Good use of $1 billion Nokia... at least they recognized they needed to do something.
Anyway, this is my little guy, the n770, and then its great-great-grandson the current n900 beneath it:
Yeah - thats because they are barely even sold over here, largely because the operating system is about as up-to-date and attractive as Windows Mobile. Nokia phones have been stuck in a pre-iPhone world, and couldn't break out.
Nokia even paid $1 billion to buy Symbian, the company which makes the software for Nokia phones (and some other companies as well before that). But symbian was unable to make an effective modern operating system, which is why as of today a little known science project of Nokia's will step up to try and save the company.
By this I mean Nokia's line of internet tablets, one of which I bought for my brother a few years ago, and I loved it so much I got one for myself. For their time (came out in 2005) they were revolutionary little guys running a touch-friendly version of Linux known as Maemo. They were popular really only among the geek class (its was true to Linux - you could adjust everything, but even installing programs could be a pain) but were very powerful for their time. But really, it was always just a small sideline for Nokia - a company that measures major product lines by billions of units sold. Even the latest and greatest, and the first to be a cellphone as well as a internet tablet (though even mine has a mic and a speaker - so you can hold it to your ear when using it to make Skype calls - pretty cool really) was released as a sideline project for Nokia and was stated to not be for general consumption.
Well no longer. Nokia has now said that all new high-end smartphones will be based off MeeGo (nee Maemo) and that Symbian will be used to power cheap low-end smartphones, while featurephones all but disappear from everywhere but the developing world. Good use of $1 billion Nokia... at least they recognized they needed to do something.
Anyway, this is my little guy, the n770, and then its great-great-grandson the current n900 beneath it:
What it means is we will hopefully again see innovative and interesting phones from Nokia. So far, looks like the major phone OS's are lining up to be iPhone, Windows Phone 7, webOS, Android, and whatever Blackberry does to replace its current OS (they bought a Linux company - so likely will be pulling a similar move to Nokia in the near future)
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