Way back in November of last year, Paul Amsellem, the former Head of Nokia France, said that the Finnish handset maker would be releasing a Windows 8 tablet in June 2012. Seems that he was off by a quarter if this latest rumor from DigiTimes is to be believed. Our favorite Taiwanese rumor site says:
“Nokia will team up with Microsoft to venture into the tablet PC market by releasing a 10-inch Windows 8-based tablet PC set on Qualcomm’s dual-core platform in the fourth quarter of 2012 at the earliest. Nokia is expected to outsource production of the 10-inch tablets to Compal Electronics with the first batch of shipments to top 200,000 units.”
None of this is really surprising. Nokia is now Microsoft’s bitch for all intents and purposes, and these days practically every handset maker also manufactures a tablet. What OS did you honestly think Nokia’s first tablet would run? Symbian? MeeGo? Of course it’s going to run Windows 8. Now it should be noted that this isn’t the first “computer” that Nokia has made. In August 2009 Nokia launched the “Booklet 3G”, which was pretty much the most over priced and under powered netbook to ever hit the market. The thinking behind it was “people like our brand, so let’s put it on a computer!” … and it obviously didn’t work. Will this mysterious tablet fare any better? That’s tough to say since we don’t know how the public will react to Windows 8 and the radically new user interface it brings to the table.
The bigger question here is pricing. Nokia’s Windows 8 tablet will have to compete against the retina display packing $500 third generation iPad, the $400 second generation iPad, and the $200 Amazon Kindle Fire. This isn’t going to be easy for Nokia, but we’re curious none the less to see what their talented designers can come up with.