Nokia seeking netbook production partners

The technical specs of a Nokia netbook (if they were to ever appear...) are still being widely debated on many blogs, but the handset company is reliably said to be in negotiations with Taiwan laptop makers and EMS companies concerning manufacturing plans to enable Nokia to enter the netbook market sooner than originally suggested.

Going against its current strategy of outsourcing most OEM orders for its handset business, Nokia is thought to be considering a joint design and manufacture approach for its netbook products, with Compal Electronics and Foxconn Electronics as the top two potential Taiwanese partners.

Both of these firms are capable of manufacturing netbooks based on either Intel's Atom or Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform, although an ARM Sparrow processor was the first chipset mentioned along with Nokia netbook plans. The OS--either Linux or Symbian--is still the topic of much industry speculation, with portable PC die-hards (ex-Psion zealots) much favouring the Symbian route.

For more on this story:
DigiTimes

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