Nokia is developing a new tablet for later this year in the wake of Apple's iPad launch, according to an analyst.
"You don't want to give that much of a lead to Apple because it otherwise becomes insurmountable," Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman and Renshaw, told Reuters. "Right now the supply chain (for a Nokia tablet) is being primed up for a fall release. It has to be on the shelf by September-October to meet demand for the holiday window."
A Nokia spokesman declined to comment on the speculation.
Apple sold more than 300,000 iPads on the gadget's first day of availability last weekend, and other companies, including HP and Samsung, are working on tablet computers of their own. Further, it's not entirely surprising that Nokia is working on a new tablet product--the company has been dabbling in them for years. As PCMag.com notes, Nokia has been producing Internet tablets via its N-Series line of device for four years. The company has released the N770, N800, N810 WiMAX tablet and, most recently, the Maemo-based N900.
Analysts predict the new tablet will run MeeGo, the software platform created through the combination of Nokia's Maemo with Intel's Moblin platform. The companies announced the action at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, in February, and although they did not detail specific devices for the platform, they said they wanted to define "a new mobile platform beyond today's smartphones, notebooks and netbooks" for hardware, software and mobile Internet services.
For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this CNET article
- see this PCMag.com article
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