“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.
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.