Microsoft rekindled its on-again, off-again love affair with tablet PCs late last month, as CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts that it’s giving top priority to its tablet project. However, he was vague about the details. The tablet would run on Intel’s forthcoming Oak Trail processors, he said — but these won’t be available for about another year. At different times, he mentioned Windows 7 and Windows Phone, in a manner that hid more than it revealed about the operating system such a tablet would run.
Microsoft is dominant in the enterprise largely due to its MS Office franchise and no other OS has a proper MS Office Mobile running. There are clones like QuickOffice and Documents2Go on both iOS and Android, but there will always be compatibility issues with clones.
For Microsoft I guess the question is, do they want to stay exclusive with MS Office on mobile Windows to help drive take-up of the platform, or do they want to protect their Office monopoly by offering Office on other platforms too (as they do for OSX).
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Microsoft's Mobile Morass, Part 2
Posted by: Richard Adhikari August 6, 2010 05:00 AMMicrosoft rekindled its on-again, off-again love affair with tablet PCs late last month, as CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts that it’s giving top priority to its tablet project. However, he was vague about the details. The tablet would run on Intel’s forthcoming Oak Trail processors, he said — but these won’t be available for about another year. At different times, he mentioned Windows 7 and Windows Phone, in a manner that hid more than it revealed about the operating system such a tablet would run.
For Microsoft I guess the question is, do they want to stay exclusive with MS Office on mobile Windows to help drive take-up of the platform, or do they want to protect their Office monopoly by offering Office on other platforms too (as they do for OSX).