“Microsoft may be hoping to more directly challenge Apple with a self-branded Windows 8 tablet, part suppliers asserted in a rumor on Tuesday,” Electronista reports.
“The company would collaborate directly with TI, possibly using its 1.8GHz OMAP4470 chip, and brand it much the way the company has the Xbox 360 or Zune,” Electronista reports. “The company was said by Digitimes to be keeping a ‘low profile,’ in part to give it the opportunity to scrap the project without much attention.”
Electronista reports, “While Microsoft had no reservations competing in the MP3 player space with the Zune, negating third-party hardware that had already been failing to compete with the iPod, a move into designing its own tablet PC would be challenging its core business. PC manufacturers aren’t expected to react in the short term but would likely balk knowing that Microsoft would favor its own hardware in marketing Windows 8… The iPad has been a sore point for Microsoft. It had pushed Windows-based tablet PCs for eight years but, in nine months, had seen Apple outsell every Windows tablet ever made.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Stillborn.
Laugh? I almost shat!
Will it come in brown?
LOL!
Surprised the media (MDN included) treat anything Microsoft says (or does) as newsworthy. That ship sailed a decade ago…
Ya, because the zune and new windows phones have been such a resounding success that a windows branded tablet is a sure fire success, right?
Like “cargo cults” — based on the idea that if one makes a runway and wears coconut shell headphones, planes will magically arrive loaded with riches — MS (and others) believe that marketing a tablet alone (with no iTunes-like ecosystem) will bring success.
“no iTunes-like ecosystem” … like, Xbox Live, per se?
Actually, the Zune is awsome and better than the iPod in every way. I’m not sure about the touch base devices or Windows phone because I use Android, but the Windows tablet runs a full OS, and it will smash the competition because of that. Install anything, run full Java, yeah I’ll take that. I just hope the hard drive limit issue gets addressed.
Well, I guess all those iPad killer they had images of must not have panned out. I guess it takes longer to actually build the device than to get a Solidworks / Photoshop version out.
Maybe this iPad killer will actually be tested and not kownloaded the the pictures folder / iPhoto!!
did you mean klownloaded? Suddenly MS software makes sense.
With respect to iKillers, I’d like to ask Microsoft one question: what happened to your iPod killer? Has it been squirted into the trash bin that’s kept under Ballmer’s big assed table in his office?
When Microsoft came out with its own Zune MP3 players, it completely killed its partners in the Play-for-Sure cabal and handed the keys to Apple to the MP3 kingdom. Now it is repeating the same mistake with its Window 8 tablets; and surely potential partners will not want to touch Microsoft with a barge pole after the Play-for-Sure’s fiasco. Microsoft is
between a rock and a hard place; and in both places Microsoft will lose.
I wonder about those articles that claim Apple is a terrible business partner, but somehow MS is wonderful.
Ha ha. Squirting in the trashbin. Live it.
OK, so this has to be the biggest MDN joke of the day. maybe of the week. maybe of the month. and in the running for all 2011.
actually, tho, Electronista does not use the word “killer” in its headline.
“Does not use the word ‘Killer?'” How refreshing!
That’s so …… precious! I think they should call it the hmmmmmm How about Zune Tablet? or Zoo-blet? Or POS-ablet?
Or “Suppository?”
Or “Squirtlet”
The Colostomy Baglet?
Awesome.
Fail AND tick off the OEMs at the same time!
ROTFLMAO
MANGO 10″…. screen size that is.
I hope they spend a few billions on this project, put truckloads in all the stores, have some weird advertising, and have it go down in flames like they have come to do so well.
You have to give them credit. They keep coming back, not realizing that it’s all over.
It’s just a flesh wound.
Or a rounding error!
Haven’t heard Ballmer et al use that phrase in a while:)
MS is down but not out. They are working on a new contact sport involving Microsoft (TM) chairs. If it catches on, MS is in the money.
WWCF
World Wide Chair Fighting, or:
Survivor, Redmond. Two thieves and a used car salesman fight off the viruses and bloat of Redmond to see who wins the million dollars.
or LOST…
…and microsoft are the Others. They have been in the mobile space since it started, but have been forgotten long ago leaving behind only relics and mythology.
“I’ll bite your kneecaps!”
1. Rumour = “Everything’s fine folks! Stay with Microsoft! We’re going to get it right SOON! VERY, VERY SOON!”
2. See?! Ballmer’s doing great things. Microsoft would be CRAZY to let that brilliant visionary get away. He’s a real keeper!
3. Maybe we’ll see a beautiful, CGI movie of this rumoured MS tablet. THEN we’ll KNOW it’s really coming!
4. Windows on a tablet; What could possibly go wrong?
5. Wait. Hasn’t Windows been available on tablets for the past nine years?
6. Ignore #5. Here in Redmond, everything’s just dandy!
It serves to remind us how much MONEY these idiots have to waste on projects that are neither use nor ornament.
Instead of building something that North American workers could manufacture and enable society to become real again, they play like Nero and then send the results to China.
There is no sense any more – watching M$oft, RIM, Google, Ford, GM, Chrysler and their idiot leaders makes me angry.
No common sense, no thought. Soon all the rich shareholders will live in California, which will be gated off, while the rest of America turns to eating cardboard.
In case you hadn’t heard California isn’t exactly flourishing in this economic climate. Eventually they will all move to Texas, the land of opportunity.
Everyone in the world benefits when Apple wins and Zmicrosoft loses!
I bet they’ll have another iDevice amnesty where they try and get their weak willed and suck up employees to part with infinitely better products.
A big effing empty box in reception.
The internal codename M$shaft has been using is the, Potato.
Brown and bland…
Hey now! No need to insult potatoes! They have far more taste than MS products!
And I’m very much looking forward to the certain-to-be, hilariously-entertaining and prescient, mock-funeral for iPad, to be held on the Redmond campus.
Eectronista? You sure it’s not from the Onion?
and soon, windows will conquer all tablet OS market. just like windows did in desktop market….
Damn it, who left the door open? Got another Microsoft employee in here again.
Just the name Bing will give you a clue as to who left a pile of doo doo on his plate this morning.
How about “Ping?” Is that much better?
No, Apple conquered the tablet.
It remains to be seen if Microsoft can build a successful franchise around a battery. To date every thing they’ve tried, that ran on batteries, has been a dismal failure in the market.
I have no doubt that Microsft can compete in the mobile space and maybe even sell tens of millions of Microsoft-branded tablets but, not until Ballmer T Clown is gone, along with the top three layers of Microsoft’s leadership.
Go ahead, Microsoft – produce it. Make sure you ramp it up and add your own branding to the hardware. Produce them by the millions – they’ll sell – tablets are easy, remember? They’re just Windows machines minus the mouse and keyboard – how hard could it be? And with your marketing cachet, how could you lose?
I like their strategy, I like it a lot.
Steve Ballmer is such a brilliant CEO, he knows they need an iPad copy to sell in their copied Apple Stores.
Full steam ahead Ballmer, no iceberg in sight.
New excuse-
“Windows 8 my homework…”
(with apologies to Gary Larson)
Sill unborn
ipad killer like ‘courier’?
lol.
More likely a reference design.
Isn’t Windows 8 like a UI shell built on top of Windows? If so, by the time you boot the thing iPad 25 will be released. Yay, now I can use a Slate to do spreadsheets for the 1 hour the Slate will last after Windows drains the thing…
Crap in, crap out.
“It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet. But maybe we’ve all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft’s astonishing take on the tablet.
Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the “late prototype” stage of development.
http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet
This article is a year and a half old. Typical of Microsoft – they can’t get version 1 out before Apple is already working on version 3.
It’s good to know this kind of Microsoft FUD doesn’t work anymore.
Great!! finally the BIG ASS tabLE will be produce!! I need one to replace my coffee table… err better NOT, it’ll ruin my decor!! 😛
Hey!! Don’t dis the BIG ASS tabLE!! I saw a few in Vegas last year in a bar. They almost worked…at times…well, one almost did. Nevermind…it was a Donkey Kong machine…sorry.
(Ballmer: “So close…so freakin’ close…”)
The TilePad
Window 8 Tablet iPad killer
Should read as……. “Windows 8 Tablet iPad killed”, as in future past tense!!
Waiting for the Surezuntab with baited breath …
I hope it includes MSPaint!
I still love Windowslate™, it’s perfect and in brown please.
The real question is – will there be another mock funeral at MS? That worked out SO well the last time…
It shouldn’t be, “iPad Killer.”
It should be, “iPad. The Killer.”
iPad kills everything in its path.
One word sums up this entire scenario perfectly….
re-Zune
or is that two…
why don’t they just call it a day and close ? they don’t make products that people want or the even work
MS… the “stain” on the computer world’s “Blue Dress”!
Need to run DNA test to determine if that is Gate’s or Ballmer’s “junk”!
Laugh all you want but its MS’s only chance to make a decent tablet. The key like with Apple is to make the hardware and the O/S. Android’d biggest problem IMO is they don’t make the hardware, Google leaves it to a bunch of tech companies that don’t understand “computer devices” !
MS did a kick ass job with XBOX 360 but seriously F-ed up on the hardware manufacturing design (not the hardware system design!!) by cutting corners everywhere to save money.
They could make a decent tablet if they put the right team on it .
I love it when good common sense prevails. Bravo! I_love_pinstripes!
No they really can’t.
I don’t think you understand how bad the culture at MS really is and or how that affects the ability of any remaining talented leaders (and yes it is going to require many gifted free thinking team leaders (with teams that really believe and want to follow them) is a wide array of disciplines to actually pull of a tablet.
Well MS has very few (any talent they had has left the building or is at the door) and because of the bully culture present at MS those individuals aren’t free to do what they can do anyhow. (particularly because the is a gigantic multi discipline multi division kind of thing)
Sorry but no matter how much you want to believe, it just isn’t possible.
Uh-oh, unless there’s some hidden genius here, I’m starting to doubt the competency of Ballmer…
Shouldn’t Microsoft just re-use the perfectly executed Janus -> Played-For-Sure -> Zune plan for tablets?
1) Roll out a platform for 3rd party hardware and content
2) Kill 3rd party content by launching your own store
3) Kill 3rd party hardware by launching your own hardware
4) Beat the dead horse by not having content from your previous store or 3rd parties be compatible with your new hardware.
5) Fail to update your hardware for a couple of years without guidance as to what you plan to do.
It seems like with tablets, Ballmer is making a half-assed effort to destroy their market. I mean, he did a good job at failing to innovate with tablets, and keeping them as keyboardless-notebooks that nobody wanted for many years. And he helped by claiming 2010 was the Year of the Tablet (it would’ve been nicer if he had mentioned iPad by name though). It was also a nice touch for him to later claim that tablets were a fad, and Microsoft didn’t really believe in them.
But, it sucks that right after developing the hardware reference for Windows 8 tablets, they’re starting rumors about screwing partners over with their own tablet.
Ballmer should let the partners invest in R&D and even distribution and marketing before screwing them over.
Ballmer just wants As Long As It Takes to take longer.
Microsoft should decide if they are a hardware developer or not.
Wow, MS coming to the forefront with a tablet of their own!
I can only say it means one thing:
AMATEUR HOUR IS OVER!!
(now I’m just making myself laugh)
Good.
Now if they dump the idea of.using wondows 8 and start on a fresh uaerland stack keeping only the nt kernel they *might* have a chance.
Personall i do not see it ending well
You know… there are people who will buy a MS-branded tablet simply because it’s not an Apple device.
Wow. That settles it. The iPad’s lead is cemented. Microsoft entering the tablet market all but guarantees Apple’s supremacy. Microsoft will suck the air out of the room for everyone except Apple. Keeping Balmer at MSFT is the best thing ever for Apple.
And the target date for this is “late 2012” — which means the iPad 3 will have been out for six months, and probably about 100 million iPads will already have been sold. Nice going, MS! That’ll fix Apple’s wagon.
We need to hear Microsoft’s strategy on this. Where have you gone, Mr. ZuneTang? A website turns its lonely eyes to you. Woo woo woo.
You made me spit my wine!
Give it a chance guys… geez!!!
They gonna name it after their ipod killa..
it will be the Zune 720 tablet.
720 being the degrees it spins outta control b4 it goes down the gurggla
I think it’s cute. Let them give it their best shot.
Read the headline … burst out laughing!
It won’t be a Microsoft device without a squircle.
Once you are 4 kilometers back in the Tour de France on a 60 kilometer race you are dead last.
Microsoft is 4 years back in the tablet race (or more if you believe Steve Jobs) and is DEAD LAST.
Tell me how they pull this out against the existing mindshare of consumers?
It is NOT just about “the tablet”. It is now the ecosystem.
Remember the iPod killer? Announced half a dozen times a year by many, for 10 years? Never happened.
Very nice article ,iKiller is the best.