26 Aug 09 3G Booklet – Begining of things to come?

Nokia is planning to release the Nokia 3G Booklet .  Now this did come as a surprise to a lot of people, but I have been predicting this for a while. I think we will soon see Vodafone, Orange, 3, T-Mobile, O2 branded 3G netbooks in the market. This is what will ultimately “kill the wifi hotspots” (well almost) and bring the focus back on these telcos and mobile device makers.

While the Nokia’s “Booklet 3G” — is an Intel/Microsoft-based netbook, I think this will soon change to Symbian OS. Similarly we will see Andriod or Chrome OS on the Google Netbook and Apple will be coming out a netbook with iPhone OS. What the hell maybe even RIM will come up with a netbook with BlackBerry OS and Palm a netbook with WebOS. All in due time. But I think the biggest selling point will be the 3G card in the netbook and the ‘App Store”. Apple has shown the way to success of app stores. We will see the Nokia 3G booklet being the way Ovi store will sell apps on the netbook and the Nokia phones – with both running the same OS this will be an awesome play. With all Palm, RIM, Nokia, Apple going gung-ho about app stores I see this to be the main way to buy and use apps – on both netbooks and mobile phones.

In my opinion these guys should go the way Nivio has – treating software like any other content and allowing users to rent applications like MS Office installing them in seconds (like a iPhone app). I have never used Novio’s service but looking and reading about what they do I think they are onto something big – starting in India and then SME’s in US and Europe. I would love to see the same on netbooks coming from mobile device companies and telcos and I think the app stores are making this possible already.

One important note – Microsoft seems “lazy” in this area and I don’t see them making much of a move. Though they still lead in mobile OS’s they don’t seem to be moving fast enough with products to beat the likes of Apple and RIM. Some arm twisting by Microsoft might slow down this move/diversification to netbooks by telco’s and mobile device makers but unless they form a partnership with Nokia to kill Symbian OS or buy one of the main players they will loose out big time and will only end up on some applications. We have not heard of a “MS App Store” and even if we do I doubt many out there will be excited to build apps for them.

Tags: 3G, App Store, Apple, Blackberry, Booklet, Google, iPhone, Microsoft, Netbook, Nivio, Nokia, Ovi, RIM, Symbian