At $799, Does Nokia’s Netbook Have a Chance?
We won’t know the whole story surrounding Nokia’s Booklet 3G netbook until September 2nd, but apparently, there’s a speculated price out there. $799 says Sascha over at Netbook News (translated). Sascha has fairly solid sources, so I’m inclined to believe the price, even without the full specifications. And that $799 could be a European price which may not necessarily translate exactly in your local currency.
Since Nokia doesn’t traditionally make computers they may not be getting the best deals with a manufacturing company. Put another way — if you owned a computer manufacturing center and were cutting a production deal with HP, Dell, Apple and Nokia, who would you give the best pricing to? I’d give it to the traditional computer sellers who have a far better idea of how many units they’ll be moving. Given market share, their production runs would be larger as well, which should decrease the production cost per unit.
Computer manufacturing economics aside, are there any takers of a Booklet 3G at $799? We don’t have the official specifications yet, so Nokia could surprise us all in a few weeks. All About Symbian has the most comprehensive list I’ve seen:
- Intel Atom Chipset (Z530 running at 1.6 Ghz). No fan, which means near silent running.
- 120 GB hard disk
- 3G / HSDPA and WiFi connectivity, plus integrated Bluetooth for local wireless communication
- 12 hour battery life
- 19.9 mm thick x 264 mm width x 185 mm depth
- 10.1 inch glass HD ready display
- Front facing video camera mounted, on top of the screen, for video calling
- 1 x HDMI port (for HD video out), 1 x integarted SD card reader, 3 x USB ports, 1 x audio port
- Integrated A-GPS
- Stereo speakers mounted on the front right and left corners
There isn’t anything in this list that gets me excited or justifies a price of $499, let alone $799, and that’s taking the anticipated 12 hour battery life into account. I’d rather save $300 and buy a second 6-cell battery for my Toshiba NB205, which would give me 16 hours of battery life.
Obviously, we’ll have to wait and see what the Booklet 3G really offers before passing judgment. But even if it offers everything above and more, $799 would be a hard sell for a small WinTel netbook. Maybe this is a better way to pose the original question: what would the Booklet 3G have to offer in terms of hardware or software to fetch $799 from your wallet?
One of these 3 things would probably do it for me:
1) A 128 GB SSD
2) A touch screen (or digitizer) with swivel
3) Voice enabled (like the Flybook)
Otherwise, its a no for me at this price.
Some people will no doubt be excited about the unibody aluminum construction, but I doubt $799 worth.
Apparently the $799 is a bad conversion based on a rumoured Euro price of around €599. Once you remove tax the US price is probably going to be closer to $500-600. That might still be a bit high but these are just rumours at this stage.
Mobile-review said 399€ (probably without VAT) which seem to me quite competitive…
$800 puts it out of the netbook range as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t matter what it’s got under the hood…
I would def. like to see a SSD in place of the hdd…
I think to justify tate hefty price tag it would need to be bundled with the first year of 3G service…
If it has 3G won’t isn’t it possible it will be quite subsidized by carriers if you buy it with a contract?
Some things that might make it worth it:
- basically be a cellphone too
- integration with Nokia phones
Will, it very well could be subsidized to a point. That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. But other netbooks are already subsidized and start at a far lower pre-subsidy price point. Assuming a $799 price point, Nokia would have to get carriers to subsidize $600 or more of the hardware cost to compete under that model.
I think it looks great…but no way for 799…I agree, I would go with the Toshiba…it would have to be 499 or less to be a buy
MUST have all bands worldwide not JUST AT&T, or T-Mobile, or etc. and lots of RAM 4GB+ plus everything others have said… or no way for 799…I agree, I would go with the Toshiba…it would have to be 499 or less to be a buy without everything listed.
Meh.. Z530 is slower than N230 or N-series Atom processor.
Seems fairly basic stuff, with premium casing and features, like Apple does. If this thing would have Mac OS X and a shiny apple, people would be preordering now
Anyway, every post or piece of news I have read seems to be unable to answer this: what chipset is it using for HD graphics? I mean it has a HDMI out, can it play Full HD movies? Does it have ION? Or some propietary Nokia piece of hardware? I am fairly positive Z530 alone cannot handle that stuff. And Nokia Ovi Maps + other stuff could use a little 3D boost, not from silly GMA950.
They seem to have more battery backup time i.e 12 hours. Other than this, I think with most of the netbooks fall under $400 price, Nokia might have to reconsider their netbook price.
Given that many PC manufacturing companies are also mobile manufacturing companies (e.g. Foxconn), and despite all the noise about Nokia market share they still ship over 400M devices a year, I don’t think that the manufacturing economics argument holds.
So the ridiculous price needs another answer (or really just needs to not be true).
I think you hit the nail on the head Kevin – buying a 2nd battery for a $400 netbook makes more sense.
That is, unless, you seek the extra performance Pinetrail will offer. In that regard, $800 may not be so much. Remember the HP 2133 was priced around $800 too last year, but that price gave you 2GB ram, 7200rpm drive and a 1280×800 display.
It’s definitely a sleek-looking little machine, but it’s way too expensive given that there’s no Tablet PC functionality anywhere to be seen.
800 US$ buys a Dell Latitude XT easily.
At 500-600$ this would be competing with Sony’s netbooks – which is also overpriced if you go by its components esp its 3 cell battery. But Sony looks really good and so does Nokia’s seemingly aluminium unibody. There’s no harm in positioning oneself on the premium side of netbooks – though 800$ would be a stretch.
All I hope is that given Nokia’s success in India and thus its knowledge of how the mobile market works here, it doesn’t pull an Apple and have network exclusivity. We barely have any mobile contracts and pre-paid was practically invented for us.
I am really excited about this new Nokia Netbook,but yes I am sure this product will have a tough competition with already established players in this field like Apple, Samsung but lets see wht time has in store for this new invention of Nokia..
The 3G radio adds at least $150 and the GPS module another $100. The highest spec Atom Chipset will definitely add some. When the specs started leaking I thought this was more Vaio P than Eeepc so the price comes as no surprise. I guess this is another luxury netbook that will however have the possibility of some kind of subsidising due to the radio – in the UK at least I expect the retail to be around £200 with a 2 yr contract at around £15 per month which makes it quite an appealing prospect – if you don’t want something with crappy build quality.