The world's largest mobile phone producer, Samsung, will launch a tablet that incorporates RT Windows as an operating system in its first steps. This Samsung tablet would support the first Windows operating system to use the technology ARM of ARM Holding Plc. Its launch would coincide with the debut of Windows RT, approximately in October, and would thus give great support to the intentions of Microsoft to enter the tablet market. This tablet would carry a processor Qualcomm Snapdragon, probably the S4.
This information comes from a leak collected by the news agency Bloomberg through some of their informants whom they trust but who prefer to remain anonymous. The news comes like water from May to Microsoft since last week it received a severe blow to learn that Hewlett Packard, the world's largest computer builder, will not make Windows RT tablets in its initial stage. HP was already working on a tablet that works with Windows 8 and therefore with the x86 chips from Intel and AMD when Microsoft announced the launch of Surface and its Windows RT operating system that runs on ARM chips. This news is said to pissed off the folks at Hewlett Packard.
This change by Microsoft towards the use of chips more typical of mobile devices has caused a reconfiguration of what were its usual partners giving a shot at Qualcomm and NVIDIA to compete with Intel and ARM.
This dramatic maneuver that raises so many resentments among old partners is only understood in the context of the big bet that Microsoft needs to make to enter a market in which it was not important. And it is that the data make it very clear:
Apple leads the tablet market in this first quarter of the year with 11,8 million units sold, that is, 58% of the market according to IHS Isuppli Inc. Samsung is the second with 11% of the market and then Amazon with 5.8%.
Windows' commitment to Windows RT and the ARM chips used by Apple, and almost all of its competitors, has good things like better battery life than Intel's, something that left it somewhat out of the market. But, in the specific case of Microsoft, ARMs are only capable of loading Windows applications typical of Windows 8 and RT, but not most of the old Windows applications. This is a counterpart that for the moment has not stopped Microsoft from preferring a change.