Of Course Nokia Is Building a Tablet

If there was clearly any question which Nokia has a Windows 8 pill inside development, when not inside the pipeline absolutely, it dissolved now with certain forthright remarks from CEO Stephen Elop.

In an interview with the Australian Financial Review, Elop conceded that Nokia is interested in the tablet space, but stopped short of offering any hard details on where that interest might lead.

“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.”

Presumably, the “right way to participate” would involve extending Nokia’s smartphone partnership with Microsoft to tablets. And Elop noted that this would likely be the case, though again he stopped short of committing to anything.

“It is important to note that the opportunity for companionship is something that any user is looking for,” Elop said. “So, when you think about the Lumia 920, running on Windows phone, having a Windows tablet or PC or Xbox is something that will give us the opportunity to have a pretty integrated experience. Our first focus on what we look at is clearly in the Microsoft side. But we have made no decision.”

So Nokia will keep its options open for the time being. But as Elop has said in the past, the company’s immediate focus will continue to be devices running Microsoft’s mobile operating systems.

Original Page: http://allthingsd.com/20130204/of-course-nokia-is-building-a-tablet/