Analyst Derek Kerton of said any worry of being late to the tablet market is overblown.

"Apple entered the mobile phone market about 20 years after its creation," he said. "They seem to have done OK despite that slight delay."

Kerton said Nokia would be better off focusing its attention on its smartphone portfolio for now.

Although Elop is , the company's hardware has a background in tablet computing.

The Nokia-driven Maemo operating system showed how Linux could be successfully adapted for mobile devices. Without it. Android would arguably be very different. The N series Internet tablets, beginning with , were eerily similar to the Apple iPhone that would arrive several years later, although they relied on stylus input and -- -- lacked any cell phone circuitry.