After lukewarm at best acceptance of its first Windows tablets, the Windows RT line, Microsoft most likely has its collective fingers crossed for the pending release of the Windows Surface Pro line just a bit late this month.
Now it looks like it will have an additional ally to help it gain mind share and market share in the rapidly growing market segment as Nokia has indicated that the company is looking at and possibly reading offerings in that space.
Nokia’s chief executive officer Stephen Elop told the Australian Financial Review that while no formal decision has been made the company “We haven’t announced tablets at this point, but it is something we are clearly looking at very closely. We are studying very closely the market right now as Microsoft has introduced the Surface tablet, so we are trying to learn from that and understand what the right way to participate would be and at what point in time.”
While from reading the interview Elop is happy to provide hints he refuses to be nailed down definitively on the subject, but certainly seems to indicate that a tablet with Windows is in the company’s future. There have been reports in the past that Nokia has a tablet in the works but this is the closest that it has come to actually saying that it is looking seriously into this space.
The company had previously tied its future to Microsoft in the handset market where the once high flying Finnish company has hit upon bad times as it has seen its product sales and revenues hit a steep decline. It has abandoned older operating systems and become a leading Windows Phone developer. Now it appears that it will take an addition step in cementing its partnership with Microsoft by developing tablets.
