Of Course Nokia Is Building a Tablet

If there was any doubt that Nokia has a Windows 8 tablet in development, if not in the pipeline already, it dissolved today with some 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.