What Will the Nokia N900 Rover Compete With: The iPhone or Netbooks?

There’s a couple of people talking about an unannounced new addition to Nokia’s Internet Tablet family including this one from CellPassion…

Nokia Rover is an N97 killer Internet tablet

…and this item from MobileCrunch…

Exclusive: Everything There Is To Know About Nokia’s Next Tablet

Nokia’s N700 and N800 Internet Tablet series models were keyboard-less touchscreen devices that drew some interest but did not gain much traction. Their N810 gained a keyboard and, I believe, more interest but still did not become a mainstream device like, say, netbooks. According to the reports above (as well as others), it looks like Nokia is going to take another swing at their Internet Tablet category with what the reports are calling the N900 or Rover. The N900 is said to have some interesting features including…

- 5 megapixel cameara with a aCarl Zeiss glass lens similar to, I’m guessing, N96 camera subsystem
- 800×400 pixel LCD display
- GPS with accelerometer
- Video out

The really interesting item mentioned by MobileCrunch for those of us in the U.S. is that T-Mobile USA will launch the product this fall. This will, I believe, be the first Nokia Internet Tablet sold through a U.S. carrier.

My question though is: What will the N900 be positioned to compete against? The iPhone or the netbook? Personally, I don’t think it competes with either of those product categories. It may be a T-Mobile play to counter an Apple large-screen portable device sold by either AT&T Wireless or Verizon Wireless.

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