Nokia is developing a Windows tablet: Report

New information has come to light that seems to confirm that Finnish phone maker Nokia is poised to release its own tablet.

Tech site Engadget has unearthed a patent application filed by Nokia for an 'apparatus cover with keyboard' which looks suspiciously like a Microsoft Surface tablet, even offering support for a stylus. Though only published this week, the application was filed on October 11, 2011, more than a year before Microsoft launched its first tablet. And though it is merely a patent application and therefore may never materialize, this week also saw a set of images leak online detailing mock-ups for the Adidas miCoach app that were presented on a Nokia-branded tablet.

The interent is awash with artists' renderings of devices that don't exist, but what makes these images different is that they were hosted on Cargo Collective, an invitation-only community site for designers to showcase their work and, following the leak, the artist responsible has had his or her site closed down completely.

However, before the pages were taken offline, a number of tech sites, including Slashgear, managed to grab their own screenshots.

In March, Nokia's head of design, Marko Ahtisaari, admitted to Finnish magazine Kauppalehti Optio that he currently spends rougly 30 percent of his time working on a Nokia tablet although he was careful not to reveal any specifications of the device.

Back in December, both Digitmes and ZDNet separately claimed that Nokia was planning to develop and launch a Windows RT tablet but had put everything on hold until it could gauge public reaction to initial products running the stripped down OS.

Microsoft is yet to release any official figures but most analysts believe that sales of the Surface RT tablet have been very poor, not helped by a lack of popular apps that iPad and Android tablet users take for granted. Other companies, including Lenovo and Dell, which also released devices that use the Windows RT operating system, have started heavily discounting their products, suggesting to many that consumers are not interested. All of which suggests that the device in development would run the full version of Windows 8, like Microsoft's own Surface Pro tablet so that it would be able to run full desktop applications and software such as the Office suite.