After speculations that Microsoft was working on a successor to the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, new rumors now suggest that the Redmond giant is actually planning to release a successor to the Surface 2 launched back in 2013.

The Surface Pro is considered to be the ultimate laptop/hybrid tablet and had received the "best tablet" award at the Mobile World Congress earlier this month. There had been rumors earlier that the company was developing the Surface Pro 4, which would be a huge leap from the current Surface Pro 3. New rumors now suggest that Microsoft is working on a new low-end tablet that will succeed the discontinued Surface 2 and fix the software problem with the earlier versions by running the full version of Microsoft's latest operating system.

Launched in 2013, the Surface 2 is among the company's line-up of tablets running on Windows RT, a special-purpose version of Windows created for the low-power ARM-based processor. Microsoft had launched the Surface 2 alongside the Surface Pro 2 to give consumers a choice between Windows RT and Windows 8.1. But since Windows RT could not run traditional Windows apps, the company's earlier tablets offered limited utility and Microsoft was forced to write down unsold inventory worth over $900 million in 2013 due to poor sales of the original Surface RT. The company has stopped selling the low end tablets and had announced that the existing Surface 2 tablets would not be upgradeable to Windows 10.

But Microsoft's new tablet will not be powered by the low-power ARM-based processor and Windows RT and instead use either Intel's low-power ATOM or Core M processor, and run the full version of Microsoft's latest operating system. This means that Microsoft's new tablet will run any Windows software that runs on Windows 7, Windows 8 and, eventually Windows 10. Microsoft is expected to announce the new device at the company's big developer's conference, Build, in San Francisco in April.