Daniel Amir over at Lazards in the US, is really trying to make a name for himself on this one, and we think he has misfired ‘ saying that he has talked to ODMs about Nokia coming out with an Android Netbook. The press that heard from Lazards or received its research all dutifully looked and realized that Nokia has made no statements about Android lately, and certainly said nothing about embracing it, so they all duly echoed the story. It looked like a change of heart at Nokia.
Those writers without access to Lazards have also repeated it, but we find it odd that no-one so far has questioned it, so we thought we would, and our logic tells us there will be no such device. Wanna bet Lazard?
It’s not that we don’t think that Amir and friends have done their homework (perhaps they have, perhaps they haven’t) but maybe, just maybe, someone is pulling the wool over their eyes. It’s happened before. Of course we have no inside knowledge, perhaps Nokia has changed its spots overnight, and joined what appears to be an inexorable embrace of all things Google, but if it has, it doesn’t make sense, and usually Nokia does.
Nokia is not the kind of company that feels it has to cover moves made by other companies by doing the predictable thing, so we feel that if it wants a Netbook, that Netbook has two clear operating system options ‘ Symbian and a Linux derivative like its tablet Maemo version.
Not only has it spent a small fortune on supporting, improving and embracing Symbian, but it is going through tortuous Intellectual Property debates with IP holders in order to take its OS lovechild out into the open source world. That move itself echoes the moves of Android ‘ we will have two Smart Phone operating systems which are both open sourced in about a year ‘ both of which might easily be applied to Netbooks.
Remember around a year ago Nokia announced it would buy the rest of Symbian which it did not hold (from Siemens, Panasonic, Samsung, Ericsson and Sony Ericsson) for about $410 million, adding to the huge royalties it had paid Symbian in the past. It was then planning to turn it open source.
Both Nokia and Google have repeatedly said that they are too busy pushing the Open Sourcing of their products, and in Google’s case pushing the software onto phones, to bother putting effort behind putting it on a Netbook. Logically that would come next.
However in Google’s case, partly because Android began life as an Open Source, other companies can do what they like with it, hence its fairly tentative emergence on set tops and Netbooks and other devices. This has not been Google’s doing, but it has effectively leapfrogged Symbian in the Netbook stakes.
Many US web sites have sprung up eulogizing and evangelizing Android, but it is far less mature than Symbian, way behind in terms of implementations and massively in last place in terms of an installed base. But it has given US companies and individual developers a standard to lead them into battle for global phone domination and it appeals to the independent minded and spirited entrepreneurial culture of the US, in the same way that the Apple App Store does (or at least did at first).
We say, at first, regarding the App Store because initially Apple wanted total control over its development environment, a position it has eased up on somewhat, but it also randomly rejects certain applications, which developers are finding hard to take.
We sense that there is a rising tide in the US shifting behind Android, that will get behind its own App Store, once there are enough devices out there.
But in the past Nokia has stuck steadfastly to its choices and it has clearly made a statement, as recently as a week ago, that along with Intel it would not push Symbian for Netbooks (that was not specifically addressed, but by omission we can conclude this) but instead work towards merging Intel’s Moblin (Linux based) with its Maemo tablet OS (Linux based) to create new portable and mobile platforms. Clearly it means Netbooks, Smartbooks and anything in between.
An internal Android project would dramatically undermine that position, and we don’t think that Nokia would go down that route. Look at the way that Nokia has been loyal to DVB-H despite the emergence of 15 or so other mobile TV technologies around the world. It has stuck with its own invention (DVB-H owes much to Nokia for its initial existence) despite strong challenges from T-DMB, DAB-IP, MediaFLO, ISDB-T and China’s CMMB STiMi. There will almost certainly be another challenge from ATSC M/H in the US shortly ‘ and yet Nokia has stuck with DVB-H despite there being 47 million ISDB-T phones shipped in Japan at last count).
So down in the currently tiny market of Netbooks, a world that may not stay tiny and which could be big business if operators embrace them as a way to market mobile broadband, why would Nokia desert a position it has only just announced. There is more Linux expertise in Nokia than in all of Google put together (20,000 people work at Google, over 120,000 at Nokia), so the company has no need to swoon and roll over and say Google can do a better job. There is only market pressure, and that comes mostly from the way Google manages to keep its brand squeaky clean and make it appear a fun technology business for the consumer.
Nokia’s main operating system mission is to make sure that it does not lose its lead in smart phones. It has to spend much of its time enshrining Symbian as an OS that can accommodate new dimensions like touch screens. Netbooks today are a side issue for Nokia.
To us, the consumer, Netbooks are NOT a side issue. They represent our first chance to have a brush with the Linux operating system (unless we are dumb and buy a Windows based Netbook), on a piece of equipment that is not quite so essential (and expensive) as our PC or Laptop. You might champion Linux but find it tough to make a leap if all of your Word documents have to be imported onto Linux, and hence never buy a laptop with it on. But a $200 Netbook that is used for browsing and checking mail and perhaps watching the odd film, that’s no risk. So Netbooks MAY BECOME hugely significant, because they open up the Linux market to the consumer. But they are not yet.
Apple has shown that you do not need an open source environment to create revolutionary products, so Nokia and every other handset maker will not feel it has to rely on Android for Smart books. They can pick whatever they are comfortable with. The only issue about new devices going forwards is that they come with some form of App store so that the consumer, not the operator, can decide what applications run on them. Most applications can achieve tight integration by simply being on the same underlying operating system, Linux, even if it is across widely varying versions, because an accompanying SDK, makes porting pretty simple.
Our own position is that Netbook is already a tarnished term. A Sony Vaio which was clearly a miniature full function laptop, was described as a Netbook by all and sundry when released last week, purely because of its size. Mini-notebooks everywhere use the name, and the Intel Atom processor ‘ but the devices are power hungry and low function compared to the ARM based devices which are coming. Even Smart Phones are looking more and more like Smart books in that they have side slider Qwerty Keyboards, even if they are too small and too expensive as yet.
All of which shows that the market for devices which sit between the PC and the smart phone are not yet truly defined ‘ and while that is the case there is no reason for Nokia to bow down to a US company that has recently written a fairly unstable Linux variant that runs on a phone ‘ even less need if that company has mass market appeal and could potentially wrest control of the portable device agenda from the Finnish giant.
All of which says that no, Nokia is NOT coming out with an Android device ‘ not this year, and not next and anything after that has not yet been decided.