Nokia eyes laptop market

With netbooks being the hottest-selling ticket in the PC space, Nokia is looking at entering the market in anticipation of the convergence between smartphones and ultraportable notebooks, reports PCWorld.

Will the laptop and smartphone converge in the future? Nokia is lending more credence to the idea, with the company suggesting it may develop its own laptop.

In an interview with Finnish broadcaster YLE, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said his company was "looking very actively" at the laptop market.

When Intel announced its low-power Silverthorne chip in 2007, aimed at the mobile computing market, the folks at Centaur Technology, who had been designing low-power x86 chips for mobiles under Taiwanese parent company VIA Technologies, were vindicated, writes GigaOM. They also suddenly faced direct competition from a giant in the industry.

“Intel has made this a legitimate marketplace where before few companies would use such a low-power chip in a laptop,” says Glenn Henry, CEO and founder of Centaur.

That means VIA is seeing opportunities upmarket even as Intel moves down, but those opportunities don't appear to be translating into revenue yet. Now, with Intel's Atom chip shipping, Henry says he's glad for the attention mobile computing is receiving.

As Dell reports a revenue dip of 16% in the fourth quarter to $13.4 billion, the desktop and notebook maker is looking to cut costs and expand further into low-cost laptops and mini-notebooks, aka netbooks, says eWeek.com.

Dell CEO Michael Dell says the cloud and enterprise solutions will also play a role in reviving Dell's business.

Dell officials are engaging in a strategy of cost-cutting and building new revenue streams to get the company back on a growth track.