Memory Nokia

During his keynote speech at the Smartphone Show Wednesday (Oct. 22), Kai Oistamo, Nokia ’s executive vice president, changed a title of his speech from “The Future of Smartphones” to “The Future of Computing.” “It’s time to recognise that today’s smart phones are full-fledged computers ,” said Oistamo.

“We should call them what they really are.” Given the increasing processing power, bigger memory and higher display capabilities, together with always-on broadband access to the Internet, “A smart phone, serving as an Internet node, is a ‘computer’ that’s much more personal than today’s mobile computer,” explained Oistamo, who is responsible for Nokia’s device portfolio, R&D, design and related strategy. The notion of Oistamo defining Nokia’s business as something beyond phones is intriguing.

But hang on. Is he saying that Nokia is now aligned with Intel Corp., calling their phones ” mobile Internet devices ,” or MID? Not so fast. When asked during an interview with EE Times , Oistamo said, “Today, they are two different things, based on two different design paradigms.” While MIDs are still more or less a miniature version of a laptop, “Smart phones are much more power-optimised and mobile-optimised,” he explained.

Shades of grey But in five years, the market will see many “shades of grey” in mobile computing devices, predicted the Nokia executive. Smart phones and mobile computers are “converging and colliding,” he observed. It’s clear that Nokia hopes to see itself not just another cell phone company but as a much more broadly defined mobile computing company.