A Nokia Windows Tablet Is Possibly In The Works

Nokia suggests a Windows tablet may be in the works after Nokia CEO Stephen Elop hinted to reporters in Sydney that the company might be considering expanding its portfolio.  Nokia, which has already aligned itself with Microsoft in the phone market, appeared to lean toward a windows-based tablet.

“We haven’t announced tablets at this point, but it is something we are clearly looking at very closely,” Elop said.  “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.”

Mr. Elop didn’t specify on what size but said there were advantages to both 7 and 10-inch tablets.  Apple currently dominates the tablet market with its iPad and iPad Mini, accounting for over 43 percent of worldwide tablet shipments last quarter.  However, Samsung is starting to make a dent, as its market share more than doubled last quarter to 15.1 percent.

Nokia has been aligning itself with Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, which runs its Lumia devices, as it continues to wind down its Symbian operating system.  Elop said that Nokia’s decision to align with a Windows instead of an Android-based operating system had much to do with Samsung’s dominance in the market.  Samsung accounted for 30 percent of all smartphone shipments worldwide last quarter, according to Juniper Research.

“On the Android side, we were very worried that we would be entering Android late relative to everyone else in the industry, that perhaps one vendor was already well on the road to being the dominant Android vendor at the expense of everyone else,” Mr Elop said.

This month, Nokia will release its Nokia Lumia 620, a low-end versions of Nokia’s Lumia 920.  It runs the new Windows Phone 8 with a 5-megapixel camera.  The Nokia Lumia 920 is reportedly the number three selling smartphone on AT&T behind only the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S III.