Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo has confirmed in an interview to Finnish national broadcaster YLE that the firm is looking at making laptops. In response to a question on the topic he said: “We are looking very actively also at this opportunity…We don’t have to look even for five years from now to see that what we know as a mobile phone and what we know as a PC are in many ways converging…Today we have hundreds of millions of people who are having their first Internet experience on the phone. This is a good indication” reports Reuters. Rumors have been around for a while, but this is the first public confirmation from a Nokia executive.

SEE ALSO: A Preview Of Acer’s Smartphones

Of course, the laptop market is already very competitive with low margins, but Nokia’s highest-end smartphones are already more powerful than laptops were some years ago and it wouldn’t take much to leap from a smartphone to a small laptop. Ben Wood, research director at CCS Insight, notes that Nokia “would be in a position to exploit its enormous scale in manufacturing, supply chain and distribution” and that “all leading mobile network operators and retailers are adding connected notebooks and netbooks to their portfolios alongside mobile phones”, which must be tempting to the largest handset manufacturer. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nokia ran a version of Symbian on the handset, already integrated with its messaging services and business applications. It makes it own modems, and would make sure there’s links to its Ovi Store and music services, which is where it sees revenue coming from in the future.

On that note, Nokia plans to launch its Comes With Music service in Australia on March 20, along with its Nokia 5800 XpressMusic handset. The Australian Nokia Music Store has over 4 million tracks from local and international artists which people can download to their phone or PC. (release)