Hasta La Gadget!

Nokia had a great quarter at the end of last year, exceeding analysts’ expectations as it blew out smart phones pretty much everywhere except the USA. But this week everyone’s minds are on tablets, and in an earnings call this morning transcribed by SeekingAlpha.com, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo had a few things to say that may have been connected to the iPad.

His comments are a little opaque, so let me give you the full text and then I’ll try to parse it for you.

“When it comes to the tablets and products like that, we did explore and are exploring as we speak with the Nokia booklet has capped and tremendous response in the market place. Of course, it’s more like exploring as opposed to do a product that will become the market leader. But I think that experience that we have gotten there, the traction we are getting, the understanding that we can deliver in different type of home factors to make us really look at the overall tablet markets and different types of converged devices between the mobile phone and the PC as these two industries start to merge anyhow. So you will see more in this space going forward without making any product announcements here.” (Thanks to SeekingAlpha for the transcript.)

My translation: We’re interested in making things that fit between laptops and phones, like the iPad. We’re going to be doing more of them. The Nokia Booklet 3G was an experiment. We learned from that experience (and presumably also from the ongoing Nokia N900 experiment.) Watch this space, folks.