Tired of losing ground to the iPad, Microsoft is poised to serve up its own entry in the suddenly booming tablet market.
After signaling for months that it would attack the market only through its traditional hardware partners, Microsoft has decided to enter the tablet business more directly.
The company isn’t talking about its effort, but Microsoft has scheduled an event Monday in Los Angeles, where it has promised a “major” announcement. AllThingsD reported earlier on Thursday that the event would center around Microsoft’s tablet strategy.
Sources say that Microsoft concluded that it needs its own tablet, with the company designing both the hardware and software in an effort to better compete against Apple’s strengths. Microsoft’s tablets may include machines running ARM-based processors as well as models running on traditional PC processors, sources said.
Online site The Wrap reported this evening that Microsoft will manufacture its own devices, something that AllThingsD sources have also heard in recent weeks.
The move could allow Microsoft to better match Apple’s tight integration, but it is also fraught with the potential for conflict. Microsoft makes most of its money from Windows and Office, and depends on an ecosystem of PC makers like Dell, HP, Acer and Lenovo to make those Windows-based machines.
Many of those same computer makers, at Microsoft’s urging, have been developing tablets running both Windows 8 and Windows RT — the version of Windows 8 designed to run on the ARM processors used in today’s phones and tablets.
It is unclear how Microsoft intends to differentiate its work from that being done by the PC makers, and just how they will respond. That said, it is unclear where PC makers will go.
They could focus more energy around Android, but Google is also in the hardware business, both directly through its Motorola acquisition and indirectly through its Nexus efforts, in which others manufacture devices largely designed and controlled by Google. The company is said to be working on a tablet, as well.
While Microsoft has always avoided making its own computers, it has experimented with a variety of approaches in other devices.
After failing to catch up to the iPod with a variety of hardware partners building products around Microsoft software, the company created the Zune. Although the Zune managed to grab the share once held by its partners, it never emerged as a serious threat to the iPod, and the hardware effort eventually fizzled.
On the phone side, Microsoft initially followed the PC approach, designing the operating system but giving hardware makers wide leeway to create their own devices. With Windows Phone 7, its latest entry, Microsoft has taken a far more hands-on approach, working more closely with fewer partners and demanding tight control over the kind of devices they can produce.
After signaling for months that it would attack the market only through its traditional hardware partners, Microsoft has decided to enter the tablet business more directly.
The company isn’t talking about its effort, but Microsoft has scheduled an event Monday in Los Angeles, where it has promised a “major” announcement. AllThingsD reported earlier on Thursday that the event would center around Microsoft’s tablet strategy.
Sources say that Microsoft concluded that it needs its own tablet, with the company designing both the hardware and software in an effort to better compete against Apple’s strengths. Microsoft’s tablets may include machines running ARM-based processors as well as models running on traditional PC processors, sources said.
Online site The Wrap reported this evening that Microsoft will manufacture its own devices, something that AllThingsD sources have also heard in recent weeks.
The move could allow Microsoft to better match Apple’s tight integration, but it is also fraught with the potential for conflict. Microsoft makes most of its money from Windows and Office, and depends on an ecosystem of PC makers like Dell, HP, Acer and Lenovo to make those Windows-based machines.
Many of those same computer makers, at Microsoft’s urging, have been developing tablets running both Windows 8 and Windows RT — the version of Windows 8 designed to run on the ARM processors used in today’s phones and tablets.
It is unclear how Microsoft intends to differentiate its work from that being done by the PC makers, and just how they will respond. That said, it is unclear where PC makers will go.
They could focus more energy around Android, but Google is also in the hardware business, both directly through its Motorola acquisition and indirectly through its Nexus efforts, in which others manufacture devices largely designed and controlled by Google. The company is said to be working on a tablet, as well.
While Microsoft has always avoided making its own computers, it has experimented with a variety of approaches in other devices.
After failing to catch up to the iPod with a variety of hardware partners building products around Microsoft software, the company created the Zune. Although the Zune managed to grab the share once held by its partners, it never emerged as a serious threat to the iPod, and the hardware effort eventually fizzled.
On the phone side, Microsoft initially followed the PC approach, designing the operating system but giving hardware makers wide leeway to create their own devices. With Windows Phone 7, its latest entry, Microsoft has taken a far more hands-on approach, working more closely with fewer partners and demanding tight control over the kind of devices they can produce.
, but still, it seems to me the companies are in two very different spaces -- Apple is in portable devices and a home computer/OS designed to optimize use with those portable devices (which is, in turn, driving the sale/popularity of their computers). Microsoft is into enterprise business software and the operating system that runs that software. Do they sell some similar stuff? Sure. But they're about as competitive as Best Buy and Staples...if Staples had rapidly diminishing home and small business markets.
