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With Apple taking valuable PC, laptop and phone market share by side-stepping the competition and releasing devices that are quite new and different, as well as complete, it is no wonder we see a partnership being forged between Nokia and Microsoft.

The goal? To produce great tablet and smartphone devices and, while they’re at it, take back some of that lost share from Apple. Nokia have announced that a Windows 8 Tablet device should be shipped around this coming Christmas.

So, lets have a look at some of the things they will need to do to beat the iPad.

Something Better

It will not suffice for Nokia to provide a piece of hardware that is simply equivalent to the iPad. Apple’s level of branding trust in the mobile computing market it far too high.

The device will need to be better than the iPad, and preferably cheaper as well. This means a bit more memory, a bit more CPU power or a better screen. Without any improvement, Nokia’s new device will certainly fail.

Battery Life

The battery life will be a big factor in making people purchase a mobile computing device. The company that makes a device that will last longer than 2 days of use without a recharge will certainly win the hearts of the consumer.

The plain fact is that at the moment, if you forget to plug in a device at the end of the day, you’re screwed the next day. A simple 1 hour charge at breakfast time is likely not to be enough either, given the slow charge times we’ve seen lately on mobile devices.

So whichever way they do it, the battery life should be at least equal to that of the iPad, but the market needs something new, so a two day device would be just great.

Integrated Hardware and Software UI

It will not be good enough for Nokia to simply put Windows 8 onto a nice looking tablet and ship it. Apple ships iOS on its devices and the user experience is always one of completeness. The operating system was designed for the device.

Nokia has considerable experience of its own in making really nice user interfaces.  For a while, they were the darling of the mobile phone market.

Nokia will need to tweak Windows 8 RT to ‘make it theirs’. Microsoft will also need to allow this. Fortunately, both of these things have happened and so we are likely to see a nicely “Nokiaised” tablet PC.

Sleek Design

Finally, the design of the device must be beautiful. It must look better than Apple’s industrial design. It is well within the capabilities of Nokia to design something that looks better, so we can expect to see this.

With all these essential components going into Nokia’s new tablet design, it could be that we will see something that will beat the iPad.