14 DAY TRIAL // Things have been pretty quiet on the tablet market. Both Google and Apple have announced their new slates, which are already available on the market, but nothing major made headlines in the last couple of months.
And then two amazing tablets get unveiled in a matter of a few days. Coincidence or not, two Finnish companies announced their new products for the next year, Nokia and Jolla.
The N1 is Nokia’s first hand on a commercial tablet. Even though Nokia was toying with the idea of a tablet for the past 10 years or so, none of its internal projects have been turned into a mass product.
Nokia’s announcement earlier this week took a lot of fans by surprise, especially that some were expecting for the company to announce a few accessories or Android apps.
On paper, Nokia N1 is an extremely solid product. Hopefully, the execution will be the same. The N1 will be manufactured by Foxconn, and will be initially launched in China in mid-February.
The tablet is definitely meant to compete with Apple’s iPad Mini 3. This is not only obvious just by looking at the N1’s specs, but design-wise these two tablets strongly resemble each other.
Both tablets are much cheaper than Apple's slate
However, when it comes to performance Nokia carefully chose slightly better specs than the iPad Mini 3. Another important aspect in Nokia’s favor is the price. The N1 will be available for only $250 (€200), while Apple’s tablet sells for around $400 (€320).
The difference is huge, so customers will ultimately have to choose between iOS and Android, as Nokia N1 is clearly the better tablet performance-wise.
The same can be said about Jolla’s recently unveiled tablet, which was successfully crowdfunded on Indiegogo. The Jolla Tablet will be available for purchase from May 2015 for the same price as the Nokia N1, $250 (€200).
However, unlike the N1, it will be available in more territories like China, EU, Norway, Switzerland, United States, India, Hong Kong and Russia.
On paper, Nokia N1 and Jolla tablets are more powerful than iPad Mini 3
Both Jolla and Nokia N1 tablets outperform Apple’s iPad Mini 3 and have been priced much lower. They’re also quite the lookers, so design won’t be an issue for those who treasure look over price.
Even though many are wondering why Nokia will only launch the N1 in China, it’s clear that the Finnish company wants a piece of the pie on world’s largest market. Competing with Apple’s products in China isn’t that easy, but if a good strategy is employed, Nokia and Jolla could be in for huge profits.
It remains to be seen if Jolla and Nokia will be able to keep up with the high demand for these tablets. In fact, Nokia probably expects the N1 to be in high demand and doesn’t want to spread thin worldwide.
Apple will definitely lose some market share to Nokia and Jolla next year, though by the time these tablets go on sale, many customers would have already made their choice. What do you think about Apple’s new rivals in the tablet segment?
