14 DAY TRIAL // The latest news on the Web reports the fact that the Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia plans to enter the netbook market in the near future. The company's intention to develop a compact mobile computer have been unveiled during the Mobile World Congress last week in Barcelona, and now more and more info on the matter seem to emerge on the Internet.
We've already heard that the manufacturer might work on a device powered by ARM’s multi-core Sparrow chip, and Nokia's CEO confirmed that the phone maker intended to enter the compact mobile computer area. What we learn today is that the company is already in talks with some Taiwan netbook makers and EMS companies for a possible cooperation in manufacturing devices under the Nokia brand name.
According to the DigiTimes news site, sources at Taiwan notebook makers have confirmed the negotiations. Even more, it seems that the company plans to choose either Compal Electronics or Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) as its partner.
In addition, Nokia is also reported to plan the fabrication of the netbooks through a joint design manufacture (JDM) strategy, and is not considering outsourcing all the production, as it usually does with most of its OEM orders in its handset business.
From what we've heard, these negotiations might have nothing in common with the Sparrow-based Nokia computer that we have talked about before. It seems that the mobile phone maker hasn't decided yet whether its future netbooks will include Intel's Atom or Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform. If the company does opt for either Compal or Foxconn from the manufacturers, the choice won't be affected by the platform it wants to use, as both companies can produce machines based on either of them.
For the time being, none of the above mentioned companies has commented anything on a possible partnership for the manufacturing of the Nokia netbooks.