Dinkles, Donkles or 3G Dongles, Ask Nokia
When the worlds biggest mobile phone manufacture makes a decision to join in on the action you know for sure the explosive growth of 3G internet is not all hype. There are a growing number of laptop users wanting the option to connect to wireless networks when they can’t always depend on an open Wi-Fi connection and Nokia is making their entrance into this market of wireless mobility; they are to produce their own 3g laptop dongles.
Nokia will be competing against Huawei Technologies, the current market leader which supplies dongles to some of the leading mobile networks, such as 3. It’s expected we will see Nokia’s 3G dongle or what they refer to as ‘internet sticks’ being sold mostly through 3g mobile broadband operators and bundled with services early in 2009.
Sadly, Nokia denies their dongles will be branded “Donkles”; personally I considered that quite catchy, nor is there any indication on price just yet, but it’s likely they will be similar in price to the dongles already available on the mobile internet market. Tapio Markki, VP for hardware platform components at Nokia said - “we believe we are well-positioned to become one of the winning providers for HSPA modem solutions. The market for HSPA modems is expected to grow very rapidly during the coming years.”
Analytics say they expect the global market for external USB modems and PC cards to jump from 20 million this year to 26 million in 2009, so Nokia are certainly grabbing their slice of the mobile internet market whilst there’s some left.
