CES 2008: Nokia Interview

Let me introduce Victor Brilon, Sr. Product Manager, Home Networking Solutions, Convergence Products. Wow - that's one long job title. In short, he's responsible for the features of the Internet Tablets related to Home Networking. This puts him right in the thick of things in the Internet Tablet world at Nokia. Since I don't have a picture of him, the photo above shows a typical scene at the Nokia booth at CES. Yes - they were packed.

I got a chance to sit down with Victor at CES 2008. This isn't my first talk with him (I met him at the Web 2 Summit in San Francisco) but this is the first time I got a nice long face-to-face. We talked about the past, present, and future of the Internet Tablet line. We cover topics like Linux, WiMAX, lessons from Internet Tablet development, desktop software, and more.

My questions are in green and Victor's responses are in blue - so if your RSS reader doesn't show colors, I suggest you hop directly to the article.

TF: This is the third Internet Tablet. How do you feel the platform is progressing?

VB: Great! Great! With each release, we have made significant improvements based on our roadmap as well as user feedback that we got from the community. I think every product is clearly an evolutionary improvement over the previous one.

TF: Have you been sticking to your roadmap or do you find every once in a while something that skews it?

VB: That's hard to say because of our roadmap - certain things we thought of ahead of time and certain things, as we got closer, we decided we had to include another feature. With the N810: Parts of it were planned a long time ago and we had a lot of user feedback from people who wanted a full keyboard so we decided to accelerate that one too.

TF: It's nice to know you're flexible on that too. What are your favorite breakthroughs on OS2008 or on the N810?

VB: The keyboard, obviously, is great. Especially for people like you who are blogging or people sitting at an airport trying to check Email. The GPS, I've noticed, is something I use a lot more than I thought I would. On New Years Eve, in the middle of a house remodel, I had to pick up a hot water heater. The store I ordered it from did not have it but they said there was one being held for me on the East Bay and I had to get to them within an hour. I had no idea where it was but I entered it into my N810 and, 20 minutes later, I was there. Things like that where you can find places without directions or points of interest without planning is just a fantastic convenience.

TF: Several years of Linux development are behind Nokia now. What are the things Nokia has learned about Linux development in that time.

VB: Actually Linux isn't that new to Nokia. For example Nokia Networks, which is now NSN, has been using Linux in their base stations probably going back five or six years. It's interesting how Linux as a finished product is compared to how people experience Linux at a university of for the amateur computer guy. This has been an interesting experience. Linux isn't about the technical challenges. It's about Nokia learning from the Linux community and the Tablet community which overlap but aren't the same. I think it has been a very healthy experience for us. We have made some missteps but we acknowledge those and we try not to repeat our mistakes. Mistakes are OK to make as long as we learn from them.

TF: The community owning these devices and other Nseries devices are tightly knit. Are there any good examples of developers or designers taking advice from the community and incorporating it into the design? We already touched on that with the keyboard.

VB: It's hard to put a direct one-to-one correlation on this and match a community request with a feature simply because there are so many people who work on hardware designs, software, radio chipsets, and more who are exposed to the community. It gives us good feedback on what we are doing well and what we need to improve upon. The keyboard was planned all along but matching up features with user needs is a very important thing.

TF: Even though this is the third tablet, there's still a lot of confusion about the need it fills. It's not a computer. It's not a PDA. It's not a phone. What efforts are being made by Nokia to acclimate people to the idea of a secondary, non-phone device?

VB: That's an excellent question. Any time you launch a new product category it's difficult because people are resistant to change. TiVo was a good example. GPS is another. Even MP3 players. People ask "Why do I need a TiVo? I have a VCR." or "Why do I need an MP3 player with 80 GB for music?" If you start by focusing on niche markets (which will always exist) and use that to expand it to the mass market. When you look at a device like the Internet Tablet which is focused on Internet Connectivity, people ask "Why do I need that?" You look at the market of the past, future and now with the idea of ubiquitous Internet access. I think the fact that you can get Internet on the N95 is awesome. Yesterday I was sitting in the airport and checking football scores and clicking 'reload.' There are times when you need a less tactical and a more strategic surfing. If I am at a coffee shop and am waiting in line, I can hop online and see the real front page of the Wall Street Journal. That experience can't be duplicated on a phone. It's nice to have devices that do both but it's nice to have a device to focus on that Internet experience. Nokia comes at it from a different angle: It's an Internet focused device that happens to have media abilities and VOIP abilities makes it different from anything else in the marketplace where Internet abilities are secondary to the purpose of the device.
About the efforts Nokia is making: I think we're doing a good job initially appealing to what I call in a very loving way the "Alpha Geek." These are the people who understand gadgets and the needs they fill. They're the people whose family calls them and asks which digital camera they should buy. I think we got a lot of those people excited about the Internet Tablet. I think we're doing a good job of moving the Internet Tablet in the Consumer Space. I'm not going to lie to you and say the Internet Tablet is something my mother will buy, but the N810 is something my wife (who is not technology focused) will use. She likes to sit and watch a movie and know the actors and actresses. She'll have IMDb open and will look up the the movie while she's watching. The demos we're doing here with the Map application, the IM application and the home networking application makes it part of a larger ecosystem that users are familiar with. That makes it more palatable for the consumer. If I told you 15 years ago that most Americans would have a cell phone strapped to their hip, you'd laugh at me. If you look at the advancements that are coming in the related services, there may be a time 10 years from now when there are Internet devices in every pocket and people will wonder how we lived without them.

TF: It sounds like a platform that has the right focus but just needs some time to be adopted.

VB: That's the fun part for me working with Nokia. It's a company that sells a hundred million of phones per quarter so there's the mass market. They also do creative experiments like the converged products and Internet Tablets to test the waters of new technologies and platforms.

TF: That actually brings me right into my next question: At the very beginning: the 770. The view from the outside was that the 770 Internet Tablet was the red-headed stepchild of the Nokia product line. They didn't understand it. With the products advancing as much as they have over the last few years, have lessons learned from the Internet Tablet made it's way to the phone line?

VB: The easy answer is "absolutely." People look at Nokia as a phone company but we're also a software company and an Internet company. These things aren't necessarily apparent or happen only internally but there's a lot of cross-pollination of ideas and efforts. We try to keep features going across both platforms. It wasn't a red-headed stepchild. It was an experiment but an experiment but one better staffed and funded than most of the start-ups in the Bay area. If you look at our sales and marketing efforts, the sales are nowhere near the phones. It was a chance to do a device on a new hardware platform, a new software platform, and a new distribution channel. I think the lessons learned from that have been pretty successful.

TF: Talk to me about WiMAX and the tablets. Consumer confidence fell when the Sprint/Clearwire talks fell through but here at CES everyone is talking WiMAX. How are the WiMAX plans going for the Internet Tablet?

VB: Our strategy hasn't changed. We intend to have a WiMAX tablet in the first half of this year that will be in conjunction with Sprint and their XOHM effort. We're excited.

TF: There's a question I always ask: If there is any killer feature that you wanted to have in the device this time around but couldn't, what would it be?

VB: That's tough. I know there are things I want but I am also in touch with the engineers enough to know why I can't have them. There was a discussion I had with one of my engineers the other day about the USB interface (since it supports USB OTG) be high powered enough to use as a track recorder to be a portable recording studio. I think the answer was "no" on that.

TF: People keep asking me about the USB OTG interface and when they can plug in stuff to that interface.

VB: [We followed up on this question after the interview: Nokia Internet Tablet 810 supports USB 2.0 high speed OTG and full OTG. Full OTG allows a role switch in host role and can actively do a role switch from peripheral role to host role. Our tablet can power external devices consuming current up to 100 mA. And the mass storage class implementation of N810 supports products listed in the TPL (Targeted Peripheral List). USB charging or digital audio classes are not supported, though. Expect a follow-up article on USB OTG.]

TF: We discussed WiMAX. What of your roadmap can you discuss other than that?

VB: Other than the WiMAX, we haven't announced anything else in our roadmap. Let me tell you a little bit about our group within Nokia. We move pretty darn quick especially compared with other groups with many more products to support. We have three products in our product line released making us a little more nimble and a little quicker. We're focused on future technology and where the platform aligns with that. One thing the community does for us is make sure we are not stagnant.

TF: I was talking with one of the Nokia developers (I don't remember who off the top of my head) but he told me it was more rewarding to work in the Internet Tablet team because they are able to see the effects faster. That's one of the things I got from your team. I had another thought while we were talking: Video converter! Desktop management software. I understand that this is a cloud machine and Video Converter is a value-add. However, consumers want a better out-of-box experience that a desktop management client would offer for bookmark management, settings management, etc?

VB: That's one thing we're considering but we need to figure out the best time and way to do it. The Nseries PC Suite application is pretty well evolved for the phone but that OS and effort have been going on for 5-6 years so it's very mature. People are asking for PIM synchronization but if we release that now and the next OS breaks that, users are out of luck. We have to think about how this will work on existing tablets and in the long term. The Video Converter got some bad feedback for being Windows only. We had to match the software to the needs of the market. For PIM/PDA synchronization, we need to spend time organizing the best, longest lasting, and most flexible way to release it and then maintain it as the product moves forward.

TF: I think we covered all I wanted to cover. Is there anything you want to add?

VB: Take a look at the demos. Our focus is the platform. WeBot is an example. They called us saying they like the platform and want to do something and we started working with them and within three weeks they had something so nice that we invited them to be part of the display. Take a look at the demos and how we're getting the platform out there.

Thanks, Victor!