Symbian netbook future is ‘superconverged’

Symbian has already demonstrated that it can port its OS to the Intel Atom processor and this could be a precursor to future Symbian-based netbooks. In an interview with Techradar, Tim Holbrow, who is the chief of the newly formed Symbian Foundation said: “it (Symbian) can already run on netbooks. Will we see them on the market? “I think so, yep.” Before adding cryptically, “but I think the question is, will netbooks carry on being netbooks?”

Holbrow also feels that netbooks could be threatened by the continuing convergence of mobile phones. “What we’re seeing at the Symbian Foundation is a move towards superconvergence… all of your technologies all converging into one device,” he said. “We can see a world in two or three years’ time where mobile devices start to eat into the world of laptops and netbooks… obviously cameras are already doing it.”

Personally I find it hard to believe that something like a phone and netbook will converge at any point. If mobile phones got any bigger than they are, than they would lose their portability. And if you keep the mobile phone size where it is today, then that would only offer a compromised ‘netbook’ experience.