It is not a cell phone -- and it is good

There is the name Nokia on the 770 Internet Tablet. I bet that is why so many people ask me: "Are you gonna put a cell phone into your internet tablet?" And I answer: "No." Let me explain a few good reasons:

A Christensen reason

Nokia makes a lot of phones – more than anybody else. For us, it is mature business and we know it. We've got the skills, technology, sourcing, marketing, channels, and all to design, create, and deliver over 30% of all the phones globally. Our phones are good – go and get yourself one!

Cellular operators, who are the most important channel to markets, are demanding – they have tons of requirements for phones. Also, end users expect a very high level of maturity. Mandatory requirements for cell phones, such as type approvals, operator requirements, legislative requirements, operator subsidies, and other such elements make the business structure very complicated. You cannot sell a phone without SMS, WAP, MMS, SIM lock, sync, MIDP, 911 stuff, various approvals in different countries, and so on. Creating a device, even an internet tablet, with circuit-switched telephony –technically – is not that hard. Creating and selling a full cellular phone –taking all the requirements into account – is extremely complicated. It is!

Internet Tablets are different – they are new. Rules, markets, technology, customers, partners, and channels to customers are new and still evolving. This is good! It is an interesting opportunity for Nokia. And because all is new, we want to be flexible. We utilize open source, work with interesting new partners, and avoid all unnecessary baggage that would slow us down. Adding a cell phone into our internet tablet would put all the cell phone requirements on us and would make us slow. It would force us to play by the cell phone rules.

We don’t mix these things. We want to get the best possible mobile internet experience into the hands of our customers – though dedicated internet tablets!

A usability reason

This I explained already earlier. But to summarize:

An internet tablet is a pocketable device. The main use cases are browsing, email, multimedia and so on. They need a big and sharp screen. That makes the device about the size and shape of your hand – not and ideal design for a phone. An ideal phone is much smaller and optimized for talking.

A simplicity reason

This I also explained earlier.

The main use cases for internet tablets can certainly benefit from cellular connectivity. You sure want to browse, do your email, or watch the latest news over a cellular network even if you’re not in a WiFi bubble. And you can do these now with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. But because there is no cell radio in the 770, there is no need to subscribe for another cell phone plan, another SIM card or anything. Simply use the phone that you already own as a modem and use the beautiful screen of 770 to do the rest. Or go and upgrade your phone to a new 3G phone and keep on using your 770 … it just got faster!