Microsoft is making use of the remnants of owning Nokia, bringing back the Lumia brand, and relaunching it as an Android tablet.
Lumia tablets are back
Nokia Lumia devices were loved in the 2010s, and met a sad end as the last of the WIndows phones and Windows tablets.
However in 2019, Microsoft is bringing back Lumia branded tablets and loading them with the Android operating system.
Seems weird? Not when you consider that Microsoft owns patents that cover the core technologies of Google's Android operating system, and has previously enforced them, with everyone from Google to Samsung paying some form of royalty to Microsoft.
With Windows 10 no longer set to transition to the small screen, and Microsoft previously failing on all fronts on mobile phones and smartphones, Android makes sense as the de facto operating system for tablets.
Of course, Microsoft will continue to run versions of Windows 10 on its premier Surface tablets and PCs.
Android making its way on to a Lumia-branded device wont be foreign at all for people living in Europe, who have a hankering for anything with a Nokia-related brand. Others who live in the UK, US, Australia, or Asia may or may not remember Lumia as a brand name.
As such, don't expect to see much if any Microsoft branding on a Lumia tablet.
Lumia plus Android
Lumia plus Android equals happiness for Microsoft.
It enables Microsoft to sell and support a range of new and attractive Android tablets, that come with first-party Microsoft apps, such as Office, Skype, Teams, SharePoint, Minecraft, Xbox, and other favourites.
It also enables Microsoft to continue its partnership with Qualcomm.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors are inside every top-tier Android smartphone on the planet, from Google to Samsung and back. Putting a Snapdragon processor inside an Android tablet makes sense, with the integration of processor, graphics, modem, wifi, Bluetooth, battery management, and more, all on the one chip from Qualcomm.
Would you buy a Lumia Android tablet over anything else?
Until next time,
Xavier Zymantas
XYZtech Australia
