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MeeGo or MS? Nokia ponders tablet OS

Phone giant seemingly unsure which one to pick

Nokia's agreement to base future smartphones on Windows Phone 7 doesn't extend to tablets.

So says an unnamed mole cited by Reuters.

He or she claims the Finnish phone giant hasn't ruled out using MeeGo, the mobile-centric version of Linux the company had been promoting with Intel, in any tablet it offers in a bid to compete with Apple's iPad 2.

But Nokia might go with Microsoft, the source admitted.

In short, the real story here is not that Microsoft might not be Nokia's tablet software partner, but that Nokia doesn't actually yet know which operating system to use, or whether to go with several.

Fair enough - it hasn't yet announced a tablet product, so it's not unreasonable to expect it to have yet made a decision on which OS it adopts.

We shoudn't rule out Android, though Nokia's aversion to the Google OS for phone, because it's now too hard to differentiate between handsets, also applies to tablets, or will very shortly when Acer, Asus, LG, Samsung, Toshiba and co. get their Android fondleslabs out.

Nokia has filed for a patent to cover a certain, N-series style tablet, so it's likely working on such a device. The patent application went in in May 2010, so Nokia has been thinking about tablets for the best part of a year - well, since the iPad was released...

But then so has everyone else - and all its competitors have hardware and OS choices made. The Reuters mole implies Nokia does not.

Has it missed the boat yet again?

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