Nokia, Intel Drop HSPDA for Notebooks

Remember last year when Intel and Nokia teamed up (with much fanfare) to develop HSDPA solutions for notebook computers? Sorry; the deal's off.

It was only a few months ago, in September 2006, when Intel and Nokia blew their own horns loudly, announcing plans to develop HSDPA wireless broadband modules for notebook computers. The modules would have been an embedded wireless broadband options in Intel’s “Santa Rosa” Centrino Duo technology, presumably migrating forward to future Intel mobile computing platforms.

Well, so much for big plans: Nokia has confirmed that it has scraped the HSDPA module plan, claiming they couldn’t justify the investment based on the anticipated market. Nokia says it will still consider developing the technology which would have gone into HSDPA modules, but right now there are no plans to bring that technology to commercial products. Nokia continues to cooperate with Intel on other projects.

Neither company cited the market case for canceling the technology, but it’s possible that the added cost of embedding HSDPA capability in mobile chipsets would have been too high given the number of potential customers for the technology. Several other computer manufacturers (including Fujitsu, Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Panasonic, and others) are currently offering add-on or embedded HSDPA and/or EDGE wireless broadband connectivity in notebook systems; many use HSDPA technology from Vodafone.