Windows 8 tablet: the first demo to be available in June 2011?

While running late with their tablets and still without an OS adapted to this category of products, Microsoft is making up lost ground. They could be ready to provide an initial demonstration of Windows 8 on a tablet from June this year.

After missing the turn on Smartphones, and now trying to make up lost ground with Windows Phone 7 through a partnership with Nokia which is considered key, Microsoft are trying to also make up lost ground in the tactile tablets field.

It’s not from a lack of promoting this category of devices, as their initial forays into the market in 2006 was a little early with mobile processors not sufficiently powerful or mature enough at the time.

Their Windows platform wasn’t at ease with ARM processors, with Microsoft having no other choice than to propose a Windows 7/x86 Intel Atom processor, with the chipset manufacturer themselves being late addressing mobility.

Having not planned a special version of Windows 7 for tablets, and not seeming to have decided whether they should implement Windows Phone 7 in their mobile products other than Smartphones, the only remaining solution is the future version of Windows.

This should come with the future Windows 8, which Microsoft has announced will be compatible with a tablet version adapted for ARM processors (although not uniquely). Numerous chipset manufacturers are working on compatibility (Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm...) and are looking at using the ARM Cortex-A15 architecture (for the first two).


A taste in June?
But Microsoft will have to work quickly as Android continues to be unveiled on an increasing number of devices, leaving little place for other players besides Apple, who are a long way ahead. It is for this reason that there are rumours the company could be ready to demonstrate a Windows 8 tablet in June, just before the closing of their financial year.

According to Business Insider, Microsoft could follow the same approach as Apple in terms of interfaces, while integrating certain elements of their Windows Phone 7 OS. Internally, Windows 8 will have passed the "Milestone 2" development phase, with this placing the Milestone 3 at around the end of July, just for the beginning of the new 2012 financial year.

Milestone 3 was the last step before a public preview of Windows 7 was made available, with the launch coming a year later. Windows 8 could follow the same development plan.