Gadgets

Nokia, Microsoft to release new Windows 8 tablets in 2013

Microsoft-Surface-TabletThere are good news for tech enthusiasts: it appears that Nokia will finally get on board and release at least one Windows 8 tablet this year. And they are not alone, because Microsoft is also planning to release new Surface versions in 2013.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, spoke to the Australian Financial Review and said that Nokia haven’t announced any tablet yet, but this is something they are looking to very closely.

It appears that Nokia is waiting to see whether or not Surface tablets can make a difference and than decide if they’ll come up with their own tablet(s). Stephen Elop added: “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.”

Stephen Elop words show one thing, Nokia has already developed or tested a tablet, but it doesn’t want to rush and release one just like other companies did. It’s a fair choice since hardware components lose their value every month and software updates come also very often. But it’s surely not the first time we hear about a Nokia tablet, but now we have all that we need to remove the rumors. I’m sure a Lumia tablet will be more the perfect kick to push forward the Windows 8 ecosystem, but the only official event where Nokia is scheduled to announce something this month will be Mobile World Congress 2013 from Barcelona.

On the other side, rumour has it Microsoft will release three new Surface tablets this year. A regular Microsoft leaker entitled MS_nerd tweeted, said that Microsoft will release:

  • A Surface RT 2 tablet that will feature an 8.6-inch display and will have a Qualcomm chipset, and not an NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip as Surface RT has.
  • An improved Surface Pro version, which will have an 11.6-inch display, and will use the upcoming AMD “Temash” APU, instead of using Intel Core i5 CPU like the current Surface Pro tablet.
  • A “Surface Book” tablet that will come with a 14.6-inch display and an Intel 22nm “Haswell” CPU.

This means two things: either Microsoft will continue and release their own branded tablets, just like they did with Surface Pro and Surface RT, or they will adopt Google position and release Surface tablets with help from other OEM’s.

Personally, if the rumours turns out to be true, I think Microsoft would not want to cannibalize the word Surface and license it to other manufacturers. I now remember how Microsoft wanted us to see the big challenges they had when they created Surface tablets and I imagine what could happen if something might go wrong with a branded Surface tablet. In the eyes of the consumer Microsoft will be responsible and their reputation would go down. I hope they won’t follow this path.

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