Nokia Corp. used to make Internet tablets for business users powered by Maemo operating system long before Apple’s iPad was even close to production, but due to the company’s internal problems and executional issues, Nokia failed to create a competitor for the iPad on time. According to recent market rumours, Nokia is working on a slate, which is projected to be unwrapped in early 2013.

Nokia’s tablet will, quite expectedly, run Microsoft Corp.’s Windows RT operating system and will be based on an ARM-compatible multi-core system-on-chip. The device will be equipped with 10”-class screen akin to that of Surface RT media slate (which means 1366*768 resolution that is considerably lower compared to leading-edge Apple iPhone 4 or Google Nexus 10”). The media tablet itself will be generally similar to competing solution from Microsoft, but Nokia plans to offer a special case that will integrate an additional battery and a hardware keyboard, which will make it easy to transform the Lumia slate into a laptop. Belkin offers similar gadget for Apple’s iPad and iPad mini.

Despite of the fact that Stephen Elop, chief executive officer of Nokia, promised back in 2011 that Nokia would design a "special tablet", based on a report from The Verge, the slate from Nokia will be nothing too extraordinary, at least, it will barely sport any “world’s first” features. Since even PC makers so far have failed to create distinctive tablets with Windows RT, it is hard to expect Nokia to unleash a breakthrough slate.

In case Nokia actually has plans to unveil a tablet in early 2013, then the company will likely make the announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in early January, or at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February. It is unknown when does Nokia plan to start selling its own tablet.

Tags: Nokia, Surface, Microsoft, Windows RT, Qualcomm, Apple, iPad, Belkin, Google, Nexus, iOS, Android