Nokia design chief ayes tablet plan
Yet Finnish phone firm counterspins claim
Nokia has revealed it has started work on a tablet, adding weight to rumours that the firm is set to launch an iPad challenger when Microsoft's Windows 8 software is released later this year.
"We are working on it," confirmed Nokia design chief Marko Ahtisaari in an interview with Finnish magazine Kauppalehti Optio.
The designer also talked up a new "revolutionary mobile experience" that will challenge the way users interact with their smartphones, specifically without need to "bend fingers" onto a display.
But the Finnish phone giant's answer to Apple's Jonny Ive may have been talking out of turn.
After the publication of his words, Nokia quickly released a statement today to say: "We continue to eye the tablet space with interest, but have made no specific announcements."
Specific? Perhaps not, but Ahtisaari has certainly let the cat out the bag, and with CEO Stephen Elop previously talking up interest, with the need for a different approach when entering the tablet domain, a Nokia fondleslab appears quite the certainty. ®
COMMENTS
They had a tablet. I'm holding it right now, though it's not switched on... granted the n810 is a little smaller than the average these days but, when it came out, it was a breath of fresh air.
God in heaven. Nokia, you wasted so much talent and money developing a tablet line that would have put you ahead of EVERYONE by now, if only you'd actually stuck at it but no, you had to can it just when you'd got to the point where it was about to pay off. And then you did it again. And you keep doing it, every time something new cones along you get cold feet and run off to carry out the worst possible alternative.
Anyone who says Elop has detroyed Nokia is only half right. He's simply carrying on Nokia's grand tradition of self-sabotage and moronic decision-making.
".....tablet space with interest, but have made no specific announcements."
Corporate stonewalling, nothing else. I do not believe that their CEO opened his mouth recently by "accident" and nor do I believe that their chief designer opened his gob and "just let it slip". This is a fairly typical example in the business of a carefully calibrated "build up interest campaign" going into the spring. We can confidently expect the carefully placed "leaks/obscure video clips" in the course of the summer and the official announcement at Nokia's big "do" in September - I'll eat my old Nokia candybar pan-fried if it does not play out like that. They are simply doing what any company does and that is to do their best to play the media like a violin - and the media of course are very willing to oblige. Cynical, me? No not all - I'm the naive and trusting type.
Re: Well....
> some of the Android names like Lenevo, Asus and HTC are not as well known amongst the less tech savy older generation.
Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Toshiba. Yeah, they'd only be known by young geeks.
Re: N810
The N800 (which I use) and later were also real Linux and compatible with desktop software. I developed Python/Glade/SQLite programs which would run unchanged on N800, Linux desktop and Windows.
I was hoping to get a N950, but that was one reason that Microsoft wanted current Nokia products killed off.
With HP WebOS Microsoft could announce Windows On ARM and then threaten HP with loss of discounts on all their Windows PC and server products as an incentive to dumping the non-partnership products and loyally replace them with WOA products, just as they had done with Netbooks by reviving XP.
Nokia, and several others, could not be persuaded by this as they have no PC products to be threatened over, so alternative strategies were required.
RE: Well
"Lenevo, Asus and HTC are not as well known amongst the less tech savy older generation. "Nokia", however, is a name that still carries weight with them, despite their recent horrific attempts at making phones."
I'm sorry but anyone who has seen the latest Nokia adverts for the Lumia phones will know how they are marketed at the Twitter / Facebook generation who have the attention span of 240 characters.
Older people may know the Nokia name, but they'll also know they don't want one of their phones after watching that advert.
