“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…”)