Nokia, the world’s top cellphone maker said on Monday it would start making laptops, entering with the Nokia Booklet 3G, a netbook with an embedded 3G card, Microsoft’s Windows, an Atom processor, an HDMI port, Bluetooth and up to 12 hours of battery life.
Nokia has seen its profit margins drop over the last quarters, notes Reuters. Handset demand has slumped, and analysts have worried that entering the PC industry, where margins are traditionally razor-thin, could hurt Nokia’s profits further.
“We are fully aware what has the margin level been in the PC world. We have gone into this with our eyes wide open,” Kai Oistamo, the head of Nokia’s phone unit, told Reuters.
Research firms Gartner and IDC reported low-end mini-notebooks are putting pressure on low-cost laptops. iSuppli saw strong netbook sales, particularly through network operator retail stores. IDC expects netbook shipments this year to grow more than 127 percent from 2008 to over 26 million units, outperforming the overall PC market that is expected to remain flat and a phone market which is shrinking some 10 percent.
