Nokia 770 - a product strategy thinking excersise

Besides the nice feeling one has when reading about, seeing, playing with a new gadget, N770 makes me feel like it does have lots of strategic thinking put into it. And yes, it provokes some constructive scepticism. So far the PDA/cellphone and Tablet PC/Webpad form factors have been most widespread. The 'in-between' sizes have been there (oldest non-rugged/industrial one that I know of is Casio FIVA) but none has had any extended lifespan. So Nokia came in with just a couple or right decisions:

• - price
• - form factor (you may want to stretch it a little bit)
• - open source from ground up (that will probably solve the lack of applications in the meantime)
• and has the problems of
• - performance (maybe the software on it is more resource hungry than it should be)
• - battery life (improvements in power management?, alternative processors?, 'flash HDD' versions, but certainly a 3000 mAh optional power-brick+external charger)
• - a little bit exotic development platform. (Don't ask how, but you have to make it work on Windows, including an emulator and support of some decent IDE)

N770 does not and will never make a good gaming machine.

• - It should do good browsing (some stripped down version of Firefox),
• - have all possible utility apps (PIMs, e-mail, VOIP, light-weight office apps + drawing-sketching - GIMP-like or 'SketchUp embedded' etc) and
• - stress connectivity (I would add Irda and software for home electronics control and co-market the device to home control companies like X10 and others).
• - Have an out of the box N770+Windows PC optimized Wireless Display implementation (forget Mira)
• - Hopefully, the acquisition of Intellisync also brings in seemless integration (free availability on Maemo?) with all mobiles and desktops (Outlook and Thunderbird)
• - N770 can benefit the most from the current Ajax fever. Set up and try a full set-up of Office 2.0 apps and put some of those companies into Nokias shopping list or provide or co-provide with, say Google (wink-wink) some of the essential services like drivespace, mail etc
• - Another area is in-car/GPS use and possible more serious relationship with the likes of TomTom.
• - You may consider looking at options to increase movie watching performance (specialized chips) without too much increase in cost

Peripherals need more attention and I guess - from Nokia itself. Namely

• - mobile keyboard input (buy/license Twiddler2 and make it finally Bluetooth, iFrog or the new IR virtual keyboards, Pepperpad type keyboard is worth considering, maybe as a plug-on) and
• - a set of stands/docking stations/car mount kits. The 'stationary' part of mobility should be there without the hassle of building it yourself or hunting for exotic gear.

Yes, UMPC, handtops and downscaling TabletPC-s (Motion LS800) will be there for a while, but no-one beats the price and the Nokia brand. Hopefully it is a sufficient laundry-list to make N770 the coolest device on Earth.