When Nokia introduced its 770 Internet Tablet in 2005, many industry watchers were dismissive of the £245 Linux-based web access device. However, the phone maker sold every unit built before the end of the year. And with a new 2006 model supporting instant messaging as well as voice over IP (VoIP), Nokia believes it has a device format that could even challenge Microsoft’s Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) platform.

The shift to mobile is just starting to happen for the internet, said Ari Virtanen, vice-president of Nokia’s converged products business. “A laptop is ‘portable’, but you wouldn’t carry one around the street. Pocketability means our device is always with you,” Virtanen said. With its 4in screen and weighing 230g, Nokia’s device can be slipped easily into a shirt or jacket pocket.

The 770 runs a desktop Linux distribution and uses Opera as its web browser. This means there is no need to adapt web content to a special mobile format. “It shows the internet as it is,” Virtanen said. The newly available Internet Tablet OS 2006 edition of the device also has Google Talk pre-installed, supporting instant messaging and the ability to make VoIP calls.

However, the 770 has no cell phone capability, relying instead on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for communications. Virtanen said this was a deliberate choice on Nokia’s part, and was not due to the size limitation of the device.

“We don’t want to be part of the cellular value chain, because this limits the way you can sell the device. If you had a SIM in the device, it would be owned by the network operator,” Vittanen said. However, he did not rule out future versions having some form of cellular access.

Although primarily aimed at the consumer market, Nokia has seen a lot of interest in the 770 from businesses and some industries, particularly from the medical sector, due to the device’s handy format, according to Virtanen.

“The UMPC shows there is demand for this type of handheld, but Origami [UMPC] devices are basically a squeezed-down laptop,” he said. By comparison, the 770 can easily be carried anywhere the user goes.

“Most enterprise applications are Windows-based, of course, but a lot of open-source developers are building new applications every day,” Virtanen added.

Nokia has released a development platform called Maemo for the 770 and already has a growing developer community at Maemo.org. Because the device runs a standard version of Linux and its user interface is based on Gnome, it is easy to port desktop applications to it, according to Virtanen.