Nokia Booklet 3G Netbook To Cost £500

Nokia's attempt to produce a popular Windows 7 netbook could be scuppered by the announcement that the price of its forthcoming Booklet 3G netbook would be more than double what an average netbook cost.

The device is set to have a starting price of $810 or around £500 which twice what you would pay for an Asus EEE PC 1005HA (reviewed here) which comes with almost exactly the same configuration for £255 including delivery.

At £500, the netbook will cost the same as the N97 and the N900, Nokia's two other high end smartphone/internet tablet thereby offering a complete range of offers for monthly contract prices of £40 and more.

It is also claimed that it will allow Nokia to avoid the fierce competition at the lower end of the netbook spectrum (ed: so they are literally pricing themselves out voluntarily).

The Booklet 3G - which weighs only 1.25Kg - is build around an Intel Atom Z530, 1GB RAM and a 120GB hard disk drive. It has a 16-cell battery for a 12 hours estimated autonomy and Nokia has chosen to rely on Windows 7 as operating system (probably Starter Edition).

The rest of the configuration is pretty standard as expected; there's a 10.1-inch screen capable of showing 1280x720 pixels, HDMI output, integrated 3G connectivity, WiFi and A-GPS.

ODM Taiwanese notebook manufacturer Compal is understood to have received an initial order of 100,000 netbooks for the end of 2009.

The netbook - which has been formally unveiled at Nokia World 2009 in Stuttgart, Germany - will be widely available in October 2009.