There's no shortage of actual product announcements at this year's Mobile World Congress, but if you're wanting to look further afield, here's a speculative one to digest; a Windows 8 tablet from Dell in the first quarter of 2012.
The product, codenamed "Peju", has surfaced in a leaked roadmap that purports to detail Dell's tablet plans for the coming year.
Dell's alleged plans, released through what androidcentral.com deems to be a "very reliable tipster", are the first to put a firm release window around the next major installment of Microsoft's flagship operating system.
Although the details surrounding Windows 8 are shrouded in mystery, the software - internally codenamed Windows Next - is thought to be "completely different" from the Windows orthodoxy, and Microsoft backed up such claims last month by confirming that the next version of Windows will run not only on x86 architecture, but also on SoCs designed around the ARM instruction set.
Having demoed an SoC version of Windows Next earlier this year, Dell's leaked roadmap suggests that Microsoft may be further along the development timeline than expected.
And, given the iPad-led resurgence of tablet computers, Microsoft's urgent desire to deliver a suitable operating system should come as no surprise. According to the leak, Dell will offer just one Windows 7 tablet this year, with the rest of its line up consisting of 5in, 7in and 10in slates running the latest installment of Google's rival Android operating system, Honeycomb.
