Now that the floodgates to the fledgling tablet market have officially been blown off their hinges by the arrival of the iPad, you can expect to hear a number of new announcements, press leaks, and rumors regarding potential "iPad killers" coming over the next few weeks. First it was HP, who released a video of their Slate, and now Nokia, fresh off a purchase of mobile browser and service developer Novarra, becomes the next company to remind people that they too have aspiration on the lucrative tablet market.
According to Thestreet.com, Nokia intends to push up production on their own long gestating touch screen tablet and hopes to push it to the market in September or October of this year.
Nokia is no stranger to the tablet market, having tried their luck with only limited success, as far back as 2006 with the Nokia 770 Internet tablet. They followed it with the N800, N810 (pictured), and the N900, all of which met mixed reviews and moderate consumer interest. But with the projected sales of up to one million iPads by year's end, everything has changed. The public is now willing to buy into the tablet market, and Nokia intends to not repeat their earlier mistakes when they underestimated the iPhone.
The massive popularity of the iPhone took Nokia by surprise. So much so that it was nearly two years before it could introduce a large touchscreen phone. And in that time Apple had firmly established themselves as an industry leader in a field Nokia had long since been atop of. With the push for a new tablet, it appears that Nokia has no intention of giving Apple as big of a head start this time around.
Along with Nokia and HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Google have all stated their intention to release tablets this year- and more announcements are sure to follow soon.
