Does Finland’s finest company have what it takes to be a player in the emerging pocket computer business?

That Nokia dominate the Smartphone category is simply not open to question, to a large section of the world’s population Nokia is synonymous with Smartphones. The Nseries devices - in particular the Nokia N95 - have proved that no other company makes smartphones that are quite as smart as Nokia. However, Smartphones are not the end of the story. Before the end of this current decade, the devices that we now refer to as smartphones (or just plain phones), will have much more in common with our laptop computers that any phone.

Thanks to high pixel density displays, increasing processing power, local storage space and Cloud connection speed, multi-touch and haptic user input, the pocket computers of 2010 will exceed the capabilities of today’s mid-range laptop computers.

My question is this, can Nokia deliver a proper pocket computer given their current experience, talent and resources?

Twice a year the TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful publicly-known computer systems in the world. This list gives a pretty good approximation of where the the true core computing technology current resides.

It probably won’t surprise anyone to learn that over 50% of that top 500 list is currently comprised of systems that originate in North America. Add to this the fact that well over 96% of all personal computers run using software developed by either Microsoft or Apple, and they are browsing and searching the Internet using software that is almost exclusively developed by American firms... Can you see a pattern forming?

When is comes to computing America leads the way.

Does is seem likely then that when the next extension of the personal computing revolution finally finds it’s feet, that it will be a firm from Finland that will dominate this new marketplace? Finland only have one solitary computer in the TOP500. In fact, take America, Germany and the UK out of the list and the entire rest of the world only account for about 25% between them.

The Smartphone is starting to look more and more like a transitional technology, the placeholder of a true pocket computer. Thanks to Nokia’s rapid innovation in hardware and Symbian’s frequent refinements, this stopgap product - the Smartphone - has been rather useful, both in pointing the way to a true solution and in making Nokia (and others) a bucket load of money.

However, things are about to change. I don’t often make wild predictions in terms of hardware sales, but I’ll make an exception for this article.

I predict that in 2011 Apple will sell more iPhones than Nokia sell Symbian based Smartphones. I also predict that as a consequence of this Nokia will be forced to adopt either Windows Mobile or Google’s Android as it’s primary OS.

I know it sounds crazy to think that things could be overturned in such a short space of time, but honestly, just think for a moment about how America has totally dominated the computing industry in the last 50 years. America has too much momentum, too much force in this arena. I really can’t see it being stopped by the transition from laptop to pocket computing.

What do you think, can Nokia offer a truly class defining pocket computer using Symbian? Have Nokia got what it takes to create innovate pocket computing hardware? Can Nokia sustain their current growth rate by simply refining the Smartphone? Do we really need pocket computers?