I think there's a market there if Nintendo's expectations are reasonable. 

iPad sells like 35-50 million units a year, Nintendo I think would be quite happy with 10-15 milion a year. Apple and Samsung they can't compete head on with, but Asus and Sony? It's a big pie for tablets, Nintendo just needs a little slice. 

At $199.99 it could be a lot cheaper than most tablets. They would sell a ton in Japan too. 

Also I think this could be their home console solution for a few years anyway too. Give it a TV dock which contains a second core of GPU/CPU and doubles the RAM and it could probably play Wii U quality engines in 1080p on a TV. 

The Xperia Play had little to no support from the main Sony corp. At the time they were still operating under Sony Ericsson and kept the Play as a seperate entity to the Playstation brand. It was effectively an Android phone with a built in controller. There was virtually nothing extra, and it was underpowered compared to the top phones of the time (I know, I had one). Now there's the possibility of a properly supported Playstation phone but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Anyway, my point is, no one's actually tried this with a decent level of support (both in terms of marketing and software).

If Nintendo makes a tablet wouldn't they need more non gaming programs? like a nintendo word processor?

"The gaming tablet built for U." I think this could sell well, if priced right.

I wonder if they turn a wiiu into a tablet. Anyone know if this possible?

I think a cooler idea would be to just stick a 2DS in a Wii U gamepad.

If Nintendo made a tablet, I think its design should be elegant and NOT look like a toy. Lamentably, for the mainstream Nintendo "is for kids".

Apple devices sell because they are desireable. And being the market leaders as they are, they get away with releasing the same/similar device, year after year with subtle changes. I don't see that working for a Nintendo. When the competition is so strong it would get eaten up and chewed back out.

Right, so lets say they did release a tablet $199. The parts would need to be cheap. So; no IPS panel, low capacity battery and other cost cutting measures to meet that price point. To work the tablet would need to be either asleek elegant device for teens/adults - going after the iPad crowd. So more quality parts are needed (which, would be disasterous imo) or, a cheap tablet for kids.. which would also be a mistake.

I mean a PS Vita is still what, around $200 US and the specs for the machine are now very middle of the road when compared to the smart devices we have today. And that's excluding the price of the built in NAND/flash memory. What about the controls, how would your erogonomically hold the device? How will kids hold such a monstrosity? How portable would it be? Nah, can't see it I'm afraid.

A hybrid portable might work though. Assuming the console is priced well and affordable.

The Vita has been $199.99 for a while, I think by 2015 Nintendo could get a slightly larger screen (5.7 inches?) but they could just use a regular LCD, nothing too fancy. Nice quality, probably like the newer Vita revision uses (rather than OLED).

I think portable chip tech has started to improve quite a bit since the Vita came out, so Nintendo could probably get a chip a good deal more powerful by next year.

ARM CPU + NEC GPU (G6200?) perhaps. I like the idea of a slider design like this:

^ literally just edited, as you posted lol. Was looking around at various sites (Gamestop, Best Buy, Target etc for Vita prices). Forgot about the price drop. But my point remains.

Chip wise they would do well with a multicore ARM CPU with the latest PowerVR GPU, or a Qualcomm Adeno. Maybe the upcoming Tegra 6+/7 chip (though Nvidia portable SOC are notorious for being hot, power guzzlers so maybe not the best choice). Perhaps even one of AMD's portable range of APU's (x86).