Walt & Nokia's "OP" Kallasvuo Chat About Symbian, N97 & US Carrier Relations At D7

1. Symbian is a great OS and I hope more hardware manufacturers adopt it for more devices...but it has no hotness factor. Android has the OS hotness factor right now.
2. N97 rocks (I want one)...but it will get no market traction in the US if it costs $700.
3. There's a lot of blah, blah, blah here about building carrier relations in the US...but, what's actually happening? My feeling is that Nokia needs to re-build the aspirational nature of its brand with US consumers by supplying operators with cool, high-end devices (e.g. N-series, 5800 Xpress Music, E-series). I think many Americans associate Nokia with some of the low-end crap on T-Mo (1680, 2760) and/or their first "Nokia brick" handset.

Nokia Noodling Notebooks?

Both Digital Daily and Reuters have picked up on a YLE interview with Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in which he suggests that Nokia (NOK) might make a move into the laptop space. Kallasuvo suggests that it would be a logical extension of their business as the capabilities of smartphones and laptops converge (mostly in the form of netbooks). More likely this is a competitive reaction to computer makers like Dell (DELL) and Acer (2353) pushing into the mobile phone business where Nokia is currently the market leader. There is little doubt that Nokia could pull it off...the big question raised in the Reuters story is whether it makes sense for Nokia to compete in a much more commoditized product category, with much lower margins.