Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Interview with Nokia's Olli Toivanen

February 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Interview with Nokia's Olli Toivanen

TAGS: Open Source

I managed to score an email interview with Olli Toivainen, Nokia's director of product management and one of the key guys behind the N Series of Linux-based Internet Tablets. Although I couldn't get him to spill the beans on future products, he does provide a good perspective on the development and success of the Nokia N810.

Q: How is the Nokia N810 doing in the market? Has it met your expectations?
Olli: We're pleased with the results to date. Demand has been to the point that we're selling everything we can make, which is both good and bad. But it certainly has met our expectations. It's also fun to see both of the maemo based "second generation devices" on this list: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/pc/ref=sv_pc_1/103-6244252-0643040

Q: Who is buying it? Is it individual consumers, IT departments, road warriors?
Olli: It appears there is a lot of interest in miniature computer technology; both with a tech-savvy audience as well as with internet users and those interested in what I call personal media. According to our studies the profiles of buyers vary quite a bit, as well as the motivations to buy. The majority of buyers are between 25-35.

We market the Internet Tablet concept to high-tech early adopters; this audience plays a vital role in creating the technology. My personal view is also that this is one of the most interesting electronics and computer concepts out there; and the high level of interest among tech lovers seems to confirm that others share this view as well.

Q: What made you decide to use an open source platform instead of Symbian or some other OS?
Olli: Our goal was to miniaturize some of the traditional uses of a full size PC - but also speed up innovation to converge new applications to a handset-sized device. For this goal, GNOME/Linux technology (on ARM) fits very well -- both from a developer standpoint, as well as from a technological performance perspective. S60 is an extremely good technology for the type of products that we use it for, and as such, it has a strong position within the telecom industry.

Q: From the outside, it looks like the N series has been a bit of a skunkworks project inside of Nokia. What was it like on the inside?
Olli: I am proud of the work we have done within the Nseries team. It has established itself as the leader in technologically advanced mobile devices, and these devices have become an important part of Nokia's product portfolio. Our studies show that N series buyers really use the full range of features of the devices, which is fantastic. It validates the concept of convergence.

Internally, we have a real cool spirit of innovation. When it comes to Linux, it is no exception - the Internet Tablet allows us a lot of room to play and build new things together with companies and developers who are interested in Linux. Innovating at large company is relatively easy as long as it's sponsored at management level - and in our case it certainly is so.

Q: Nokia has now ported MySQL to the S60. Do you think we could see a full database app development platform on Nokia's smartphones and internet devices?
Olli: I can't comment on future plans of individual products. But I can say that databases are a natural part of any system product, which our maemo Linux based OS is, of course.

Q: The most obvious question people have when considering the N810 is "where's the cell phone?" Any thoughts or plans in this area?
Olli: We have said publicly that we will support Sprint's Wimax rollout with a maemo based
product. When it comes to the timing of other individual new features like a phone app, I can't comment on those. With the N810 we have developed the handset purely with Internet and related use cases in mind.

Ok, while Olli didn't really give up a lot about future plans, I tried! My personal view is that the Nokia N810 is just about the coolest Internet device out there. Given that the GSMA conference is taking place this week in Barcelona, maybe we'll have some additional news from Nokia.

Let me know what you think of this interview or whether I should stick to interviews with rockers like Fall Out Boy and Paul Stanley instead.

Posted by Zack Urlocker on February 12, 2008 05:37 AM

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