I wants me some Windows Phone tablets!!

Ok, it probably won’t happen but I would love to see a tablet based on Windows Phone.  In order to accomplish this Microsoft would have to change the OS name, create a new division, reconstitute an old building, fire a few VPs and who knows what else.  But wouldn’t that be cool?! (the tablet part)

Microsoft seems to be committed to shoehorning the full version of Windows onto small and thin tablets - not the massive keyboardless notebooks from the past, but a more portable version.  While this would have it’s advantages I’m not sure it would be the best solution for all.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/jan11/01-05socsupport.mspx

I’d love to see a Windows Phone based tablet.  Over the last few days I have been reviewing a Samsung Galaxy Tab and it’s pretty fun but there are some Androidy problems with it, mostly it’s laggyness (how the heck do you spell that?).

The single largest benefit of a Windows Phone based tablet would be for browsing.  The browser in this OS is actually phenomenal, doing desktop-like browsing better than any mobile OS I have used.  It would look even better on a 7” or 10” device!  The only thing that would need improving is either adding flash support or allowing videos that are embedded in flash to run in the native video player.

A Windows Phone tablet makes a lot more sense in my mind (over Windows) for a lot of reasons including battery life, instant on/off and the Marketplace.  Yes, you can do more with a full Windows tablet but how much more are you going to want to do on this form factor?  Plus, the hardware requirements for full Windows tends to be beefier and more expensive.  With tablets being an accessory rather than a full computer you want to keep the price reasonable.

Microsoft’s competition doesn’t feel that a full OS is the way to go with tablets either.  Apple used iOS rather than Mac OS X on the iPad and has done moderately well...ok, smashingly well!  The iPad sold over 7 million units in the last quarter (zoinks!).  

HP, likewise will be using it’s recently acquired WebOS over licensing Windows for it’s tablet line.  Sure, that may be more about using what they already own but that is exactly why they bought Palm in the first place.  HP is convinced that WebOS is their future for anything mobile.

All this speculating is probably pointless.  I don’t think we are going to see a Windows Phone based tablet at all.  Microsoft loves Windows and will do everything it can to elasticize the waistband of mobile hardware to make it fit.  Doesn’t it just make more sense to just slip in the svelte OS already optimized for mobile?

Image via Engadget