Microsoft's current Surface line of products has been enjoying quite a lot of popularity. Those span across the PC segment and tablet market, but fans are naturally left wondering about smartphones and their future.

The Surface Phones have already been featured in alleged renders and even leaked benchmark results. Today, however, brings the biggest proof for their existence or at least the presence of an active development effort and it comes from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, himself.

We don't want to be driven by just envy of what others have, the question is, what can we bring? That's where I look at any device form factor or any technology, even AI," he said. "We will continue to be in the phone market not as defined by today's market leaders, but by what it is that we can uniquely do in what is the most ultimate mobile device.

So apparently Microsoft isn't denaturing the mobile business. The path it will take is far from clear at this point, but it appears we are about to see some sort of a twist.

Satya did also refer to an undisclosed future handset offer as an "ultimate mobile device". This does fit in with a recent leak, linking the Surface Phone future to "laptop-class" Intel processors. Keeping that in mind, more powerhouse handsets like the HP Elite x3 with a mix of mobile and desktop pedigree might very well be the future Microsoft is planning.

Using x86 CPUs would definitely help enrich the experience, opt for a full-fledged Windows platform and break free from the Universal apps limitations. That is one theory, at least.

Source