Nokia is working with suppliers and designers in an effort to bring a new touchscreen tablet device into market by this fall, an analyst at Rodman Renshaw told TheStreet.com yesterday.
The mobile phone giant, based in Espoo, Finland, apparently hopes the new tablet can compete the new, well-hyped Apple iPad and similar products like the HP Slate from Hewlett-Packard , the Dell Streak from Dell or Lenovo Group Ltd.'s IdeaPad S10-3.
Nokia could not be reached to comment on the report.
The analyst, Ashok Kumar, told TheStreet.com that the tablet computer could be a key product for Nokia , which already has a long line of portable Internet devices, including the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and the Booklet 3G netbook.
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"Nokia hasn't fielded any breakaway products in years," Kumar said. "This is a new window, and Nokia had better be at the starting gate if and when the product category takes off."
Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld . Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen , or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed . His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com .
