Nokia is well known for their foray into smartphones and to a lesser degree tablets, but did you know they were secretly developing an e-reader? In 2013, the same year the Kindle Paperwhite came out, Nokia had designed an e-reader that they were hoping to market all over Europe.
The Nokia e-reader was known internally as Pine and it was running on Linux based system, where Nokia were teaming up with book providers to develop “interactive content”.
Stephen Elop the former CEO of Nokia decided to kill this device, as his first major decision when he joined the company. This might have been a bad move because the e-reader and e-book industry have blossomed into a multi-billion dollar industry. Likely, he was just totally inept when it came to technology because under his tenure Nokia annual revenues fell 40%. His only saving grace was selling the company to Microsoft.
Could the Nokia Pine made a difference in the e-reader sector? I guess we’ll never know.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
