Nokia, Intel plan role reversals

Nokia and Intel appear to have market envy. While Intel’s intentions to scale the laptop down to the smartphone were made clear at Mobile World Congress last week, Nokia, the world’s number-one handset maker, confirmed yesterday that it is exploring moving from the smartphone to the laptop.

In an interview yesterday, Finnish national broadcaster YLE asked Nokia Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo if Nokia plans to make laptops, to which he answered that it is looking “very actively” at this opportunity. Nokia laptop plans have been rumored for months now, but this is the first time the company has commented on them. Kallasvuo went on to say that the cell phone and PC are in many ways converging, and hundreds of millions of people are having their first Internet experience on the mobile phone.

Nokia once made everything from computer monitors to paper after it got its start in 1865. The company was launched as a paper mill and eventually a rubber company. To date, its spinoff Nokian still makes arguably the best ice-bike tires in the world. With its ancillary divisions spun off, Nokia has since narrowed its focus to its market-leading role in mobile devices.

Nokia’s laptop confirmation comes just one week after MWC, where several traditional laptop markers entered the smartphone market. Acer announced plans for its line of smartphone devices alongside handset news from Hewlett Packard, Toshiba and Lenovo. While the smartphone market remains strong enough to encourage these new entrants, wireless operators are also increasingly open to adding connected netbooks to their networks in an effort to drive data revenues.

When Nokia does enter the laptop space, it’s likely to break from convention, using the ARM processor architecture– not the traditional PC processor, based on the Intel x86 architecture—as the brains behind its computers. ARM has been at the core of the smartphone revolution, so while Intel tries to make the traditional PC smaller and more mobile, Nokia may opt to make the smartphone larger and more powerful. As those two architectures meet in the middle, James Bruce, ARM North American manager for mobile solutions, believes unsurprisingly that ARM will prevail. He said the ARM world is focused on system-on-a-chip integrated platforms that enable a wide range of products with the performance and capabilities they need for Web access. The x86, he said, is still all about the processor.

“If you look at netbooks, there’s certainly a point where the Intel and ARM worlds are meeting, and the benefits that the ARM world brings are better battery life, much better thermal profiles so you don’t need heat syncs, better cost points and, because of the very high level of integration, it means you can deliver more innovative form factors,” Bruce said.

Intel, which is still busy pushing its (invented, some say) category of mobile internet devices (MIDs), is also going one step further into smartphones, announcing LG as the first announced handset OEM to embed its chipset. Pankaj Kedia, director of ecosystem programs for Intel's ultra mobility group, called the Intel Atom, based on the x86 architecture, a shining star and a growth engine at Intel. Kedia said Intel goes after whatever product the user wants and then delivers the right solution – x86 – to enable it.

“In the technology context, the Atom processor is designed for MIDs and netbooks, and we make sure that we are delivering enough performance to run all the Internet – not just subtext – all the Websites, Hulu, MTV, Facebook, Second Life,” he said in an interview on MIDs. “We’ve done it by dramatically reducing powers so devices are mobile, pocketable and you can take it with you wherever you go. We did it without sacrificing software capability, which our customers and developers love.”

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