back to article Microsoft steers OEMs away from putting Phone 7 on Tablets

Microsoft is usually decisive. There is a saying in contact sports such as American football and rugby – it doesn‘t matter if you make a wrong decision, if you commit to it and do it hard enough, you can make it into the right decision. It works for business too. Decisiveness – even when based on poorly thought-out decisions …

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  1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
    Megaphone

    Does this mean Win 7 on ARM is nearly ready?

    If MS doesn't let partners use ARM hardware because of licence restrictions - "no, you can't put it on that device because the screen is too big" then how the fuck do they want to compete with Android? Tablets in particular don't need MS Office.

    1. dave 93
      Thumb Up

      Well...

      Spot on. Microsoft is already an ARM licencee, and Windows Phone 7 runs on it exclusively, afaik, but Windows on RISC? - it's been awhile since that was supported (DEC Alpha?).

      Windows Phone 7 will make it onto tablets soon enough just because it makes sense (money), and that is the common platform to go head to head with Android. (jeez, I'm already sick of Windows Phone 7! - MicroOS is better ;-)

      Guess what? Android/Chrome & Apple's Mac OS & iOS can run on either, apparently.

      1. Lee Chong Yew
        Linux

        This adds up...

        First Intel announces that Atom is better suited for tablets, now MS wants to make sure you run Win7 on tablets instead of any of their WinCE products.

        MS and Intel in a secret deal?

        Tux. Because the more savvy are most likely going to get the tablet /without/ the OS and installing Linux on it. And as I understand it, if it runs Win7, it runs UNR. And if it's an Atom processor, it runs Moblin.

    2. DrXym

      The more likely reason no Win Phone 7 on tablets

      Windows Phone 7 is basically hobbled out of the gate. No cut & paste, huge restrictions on 3rd party apps, plus other issues. In time Microsoft will address these problem but I expect at the moment they're just happy to have released a version of Windows Phone 7 without worrying about different form factors. In truth they probably would also like people to use Windows 7, which isn't a bad idea in itself.

  2. Paul_Murphy

    Hey leave poor Microsoft alone.

    If they feel that this is the way that they want to proceed then by all means let them.

    It's freedom of choice and it works both ways - after all it won't be the first time that they have gone in one direction only to find that everyone else is going somewhere else.

    ttfn

  3. bill 36
    Gates Horns

    want a prediction?

    I think MS is going the same was as DEC and Sun.

    Tablets running unix will be all the rage very soon. Most of them will be running unix. The market for Netbooks is dead. I believe laptops could follow within a couple of years. There is only one game in town now and thats Android, Macos and RIM for smart devices with Windows on the subs bench.

    Many large corporates have moved on and have even installed Unix on mainframes now.

    All this means of course that the average user will get used to not seeing the windows GUI, will get more and more familiar with Unix and decide that actually MS has become irrelevant and that's dangerous for Microsoft.

    1. Doug Glass
      Go

      Did you know....

      ... film cameras are still produced and supported my many photographers? It's true, it really is.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        do you

        remember Ilford?

    2. fzz

      poor fading MSFT

      Neither DEC nor Sun were primarily software companies, and neither had a lock on two major software markets. Nor did most OECD inhabitants' grandparents own DEC or Sun products.

      MSFT isn't dying off any time soon.

      Neither are laptops. There are still a lot (tens of millions) of users who do spend most of their work computer time using business applications which stubbornly remain either desktop-bound or run on terminal servers. Speaking only for myself, if I have to run business applications via Citrix, please give me a laptop rather than either a smart phone or tablet to do so.

      All this has nothing to do with W7 or WP7 on tablets. I figure MSFT will choose whatever would generate the most short-term revenue. I figure MSFT has given up trying to figure what'll make them money in the long term.

  4. Rogerborg
    Thumb Down

    Did I just stumble onto Slashdot?

    If Microsoft want to be around for much longer? Really? SRSLY?

    Microsoft will vanish up its own Ring 0 Buffer the day that my flying car is running on fusion power.

  5. Filippo Silver badge

    need to be open source?

    I don't get why a tablet OS "needs" to be open source. I can't picture Joe McAverageConsumer giving two craps about it either way. As for app developers, we - at least, I - don't particularly need to see the OS source.

    I can see the problem with the hardware guys and system developers; they would benefit from having the OS source. But "need" is a long way from there. A tablet isn't some exotic device with weird, rarely used special hardware; it's still pretty much a PC in a different form factor. I don't think you "need" to hack the OS to make your tablet work.

    1. Code Monkey

      You're right...

      ...up to a point. It's true most consumers don't give a monkey's about the source; nor, I think, do some manufacturers.

      Manufacturers do appreciate an OS that works and they can adapt to different devices. With this latest missive, MS want a greater say in which OS goes on which class of hardware. When they're competing against the comparitively free (as in "and easy") Android, this is daft.

      1. Eddie Johnson
        Alert

        Drivers?

        >Manufacturers do appreciate an OS that works and they can adapt to different devices.

        Isn't that why an OS is designed in layers, one of them being replaceable drivers? If the OS is properly factored there should be no need to be tweaking it. The tweaking is counterproductive too and drives developers away because they can't write once to many devices. Imagine the PC world if I had to do a build for Acer, a build for Dell, a build for HP, etc. That has been the bane of WinCE devices for years and needs to be moved away from. The app needs to know the screen dimensions and handle a couple standardized input devices, everything else must be abstracted. I think we even need to see some convergence to a few standard screen dimensions to simplify app development and deployment.

    2. david bates

      I save £70....

      on a Acer Revo by having it with Linpus (horrible but easily replaced) instead of windows. Windows would have added a THIRD to the purchase price.

      Theres your need.

  6. Doug Glass
    Go

    Ozymandias ???

    A modern techy type knows of the "king of kings"? I'm a retired old fart and I'm impressed. But you have to have actually been in the corporate world for a number of years to fully understand the phenomenon. It's called a "death spiral" and many a corporation has fallen into it. May not be a force today given "bailouts" and "stimulus packages" but corporations regularly kill themselves: Lehman Brothers to mention one.

    Just nature's way of culling the herd. If you're bent on destruction, some corporate entity will be there to pick up the pieces and market share. It's "The Peter Principle" in full force in most cases.

    1. dave 93
      Happy

      henceforth to be renamed...

      The 'Ballmer Effect' ;-)

      1. My New Handle
        FAIL

        Ballmer, the day it happened ...

        I said, the day it happened, that Mr Ballmer would be the complete ruination of M$. Won't be too long now ...

  7. Ian Stephenson
    Go

    Good.

    This means that games will be written for tablets (look atall the games on the appstore for the i(pad/phone/pod touch)) using something other than DirectX.

    Which means Guildwars 2( replace with game of choice) won't be tied to windows and I can finally get rid of XP from my gaming box.

    Go Micr$oft!

  8. Greem
    Stop

    Need?

    "Everyone needs tablets and they need them now and they need the OS to be cheap, and better still, open source."

    *Everyone*? Really? I'm doing OK without, kthxbye.

  9. OffBeatMammal

    Google crippling tablet/slates

    I want to get a small form factor slate device to browse the web, read ebooks from the Kindle store and check email on my work Exchange account.

    I don't want an iPad (too big, too Apple, really hate iTunes)

    Tried to find a good Android tablet but they're all crippled by either being Chinese knock-offs (actually pretty good devices on the whole just with random missing features) which don't have official Market or Google Apps or they are things like the Dell Streak (too small and way too expensive) or the Samsung Tab (again, way too expensive) that are tied to telco contracts (I don't need a SIM, I'm happy t bletooth tether and use data off the phone if I can't find WiFi)

    Puting Metro on a Slate would be a great idea, mainly because most Windows aps re not designed from the ground up to be finger friendly so are not really usable on smaller form factor touch screens

    1. Joe 35

      "Tried to find a good Android tablet ..."

      Give it a few months, they are coming.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Abort / Retry / Go to PC World

    k - so now we have Win Mobile 6.5, Win Mobile 7 and potentially Win Mobile Tablet Edition?

    Hahahahahahaha

    Wake me up when the dust settles

  11. IT specialist
    Troll

    Windows Phone 7 will be next to fail

    We witnessed Microsoft's Windows Mobile wither on the vine.

    Later we witnessed Microsoft destroy its KIN phones.

    Now we witness Microsoft's tablet business become the laughing stock of the industry.

    Next we will witness Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 go the same way as all its other mobile products.... FAIL.

    1. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Not sure of this..

      But I think they've been a bit muddled in what they've done. They have some advantages in the business market, exchange connectivity and the chance to integrate their mail and office tools with their phones.

      Instead they've decided to imitate Android and Apple by going after the consumer.

  12. l3v5y

    Don't quite follow the logic...

    I can't quite see how stopping OEMs using a phone OS on tablets instantly creates a new tablet focused OS?

    The MS line is that tablets should use W7, since it does more. If it meets the minimum specs for WP7 (and 800x480 is the only resolution currently supported) there's no particular reason it wouldn't pass certification, but WP7 is a phone OS. It's in the name.

    Android is a jack of all trades, and from the massive amount of fragmentation that has happened, either Google will have to control the OS a little, or it will fail, because developers won't have time to support that many variations of the OS.

    Google are also saying that Android isn't right for tablets, and that OEMs should use ChromeOS, so you can hardly get at Microsoft for pushing an already very heavily established OS in to the tablet sphere, when Google are pushing yet another pointless OS at the problem.

    1. matt 83
      Paris Hilton

      the reason they want you to use win7 instead of phone7...

      is that if win7 is on your tablet they'll be able to sell you a copy of Office 2010 as well and that's the real cash cow these days.

      If phone7 is on the tablet then it'll be an arm machine and Office won't work.

      Also phone7 is likely to be a little light on features which may not show up that much on a phone where the screen size limits what you're actually going to use it for, but on a tablet it'll probably look very anaemic.

  13. Magnus_Pym

    The only game they know.

    The only game Microsoft can play is 'control the market'. They know they can't compete on price, functionality or market share on the upcoming tablet market. This is very serious for MS because the age old FUD marketing for Windows/Office is 'It's what everybody is familiar with'. The first time a CEO says 'Why can't I do <whatever> on my work laptop, It's easy on my iPad' means the beginning of the end for Windows in that business.

    So they really don't want him/her to get an iPad, It's the thin end of the wedge for alternative computing paradigms. If the CEO is given a Phone7 tablet to try the iPad sale is a cert.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Windows Starter Edition

    "This is an echo from the Netbook phase of its life, when it wanted to control licensing and developer costs by introducing a "starter edition" of Windows for netbooks."

    In fact, Windows Starter Edition was originally introduced long before NetBooks and was an attempt by MS to introduce a cheap version of Windows into Asian and/or Third World markets to try and stem the tide of piracy in those countries. Like many ideas in the MS-Universe, it didn't work.

    It may have later been launched in NetBooks (I don't know about this) but that wasn't its primary purpose.

    1. PT
      Thumb Down

      @Windows Starter Edition

      Too right it didn't work, but it wasn't piracy that worried Redmond, it was that they couldn't charge enough for it on netbooks. If netbooks on cheapie Windows could do a worthwhile job, they might lose sales of costly desktop Windows. So they set out to (a) cripple netbooks by telling the manufacturers how much speed and RAM they could use, and (b) cripple the operating system with the aim of getting users to pay $$$ for an upgrade. This latter objective was revealed by the curious touch that it wouldn't connect to a home network unless that network was running W7. Well, they succeeded in persuading my wife to switch to Ubuntu within a few hours, just because it wouldn't let her change the desktop wallpaper on her EEE. Way to go Balmer, you tosser.

  15. Doug 3

    their revenue is from control of Windows API, not CE

    if Microsoft were to split its API into CE and Win32 then they would have weakened their market control. Not to mention Microsoft probably knows darn well that CE is not ready for things much larger than phones and even then it's hardly qualified for that since it does not scale at all. Things above the phone are too much like a PC and Microsoft needs to keep people thinking it is Windows. If they don't, people will stop thinking Windows is important on the desktop and then the cards all fall down.

    This is all a play to keep their single point of control, the desktop branch of Windows front and center. It is also a very interesting time for Microsoft because they've never really had to compete before and Windows is not fit for competition on the platform it must now fight on. That is the mobile device segments. Anyone remember all the CE based handhelds which required huge battery pack addons for daily use? With a power cord, they could always count on Intel to provide more CPU and support for more memory to allow Windows to stay important. On mobile devices, it's all about battery capacity, weight, and functionality and because Microsoft could not define this space, Apple has and it's a different game.

    For a hint on how Windows CE/Phone 7 fails, look at how CE is supported on Nvidia's Tegra 2. Even Intel's Atoms are going multi-core.

  16. Robert Hill
    FAIL

    Totally misjudged the critical success factors...

    It seems that MS has really misjudged the critical success factors of what makes tables work:

    1) Applications that support digital (as in FINGER) use and data input

    2) Applications that support digital (as in Finger) use and data input

    3) Applications...

    You get the picture. And that is what has made the iPad a success, and that is what will make the Android tables a success - ALL of the phone apps are already touchscreen driven by default. All of the developers for those platforms already designed applications with that in mind, all the GUI development is geared for it...etc., etc., etc.

    By being able to leverage the applications stock of the associated phones, both IOS and Android came out of the gate with a huge advantage. Now is seems that Microsoft (CLEARLY thinking about internal revenue splits and politics, not marketplace realities) is willing to forego this and start their tablet platform from scratch - and ensuring developers will have to code for and support two separate platforms.

    Or develop for Android, or even IOS. Hmmm....

    1. Wibble
      Headmaster

      They're paying the price of being late to market

      Microsoft are at least three years late. Nope, FOUR years late as the iPhone's been out that long. Microsoft don't even have a version one product on the market yet**.

      Unless Microsoft can invent a time machine to jump forwards and gain four years of tablet development and tablet application development experience... well, history is being made.

      As someone said, Microsoft are suffering from the Ballmer effect. They're fundamentally an engineering company, now lead by a sales manager/accountant with a huge ego but little or no engineering knowledge to match.

      If he did know a little about engineering, he'd know that you can't have lightweight + long battery life + fast performance + Windows 7. Pick any three. Or two.

      **Windows mobile 6.5 doesn't count.

  17. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    Amen.

    It's time to ditch Ballmer. Microsoft shareholders; it's time to start the revolt. Now, before it's too late...

  18. G_C
    Coat

    Microsoft...

    I am stand here as 'the consumer' (my tech stuff is radio access networks not end user devices...)

    Windows 7 with Office 2007 on my top end Vaio pisses me off every time I have to do something that I could do in a fraction of the time in a semi catatonic state on my works XP machine... I don't want to experience this brand anywhere else in my life...

    My BB does pretty much what I need... about from looking at stuff on Youtube... and to be fair if i'm trying to look at Youtube on my phone I really need to have a serious think about what I'm doing with my time... everything comes up too small to see pretty much for anything else anyway...

    My girlfriend has bought a phone that looks like an iPhone and that's nice...and she's happy... I might get something like that next...

    Do I need a Tablet? No... not really... I get by quite happy with the Laptop and BB for FB, Twitter, Mail etc... if i did have one bearing in mind I don't 'need' one would I have anything that had Microsoft staring back at me after the frustrations they've caused me by what is for me the heavy plough that is Windows 7/Office 2007 that they've stuck on my racehorse laptop....

    I find them stiffling and don't what them to proliferate further into my life...

    Oh... and their TV ads make my toes curl, and leave finger nail marks in the palm of my hand... this was certainly not 'my idea'....

    Thanks for reading... you guys put some good stuff on here... thanks!

  19. Rupert Stubbs

    Nice Shelley reference

    But "Everyone needs tablets and they need them now and they need the OS to be cheap, and better still, open source."... Really? Open Source doesn't seem to be doing it for the netbook crowd, so why should it on a tablet? Or do you mean, "better still, free, as the perception is of Android"?

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Ordinary users do not need open source

    The assertion that "Everyone needs... the OS to be cheap, and better still, open source" is nonsense. Most end-users have no interest in source code at all, and gain nothing from having access to it. The sight would frighten them. Even most developers have no interest in OS source code other than APIs, and no desire to tweak any of it. Such would just be a time-wasting distraction.

    The whole Open Source idea is a hangover from the 1970s/80s, when most users were programmers, most programmers worked for universities or for hardware vendors, and most applications comprised 2000 lines or less of code. It is lately being pushed by a hippie element, who see it, naively, as a weapon against capitalism.

    In fact, the group that benefits most from open source is the big corporations that have large software budgets (Oracle, IBM, Google, Samsung, to name a few). It enables them to leverage the work of thousands of computer programmers free of charge, often saving many millions of £$€. They then use this free software to sell hardware or services and gain increased profit margins. The people who benefit least are programmers, whose wages are pushed downward by the competition from free software.

  21. daiakuma
    Thumb Down

    Ordinary users do not need open source

    The assertion that "Everyone needs... the OS to be cheap, and better still, open source" is nonsense. Most end-users have no interest in source code at all, and gain nothing from having access to it. The sight would frighten them. Even most developers have no interest in OS source code other than APIs, and no desire to tweak any of it. Such would just be a time-wasting distraction.

    The whole Open Source idea is a hangover from the 1970s/80s, when most users were programmers, most programmers worked for universities or for hardware vendors, and most applications comprised 2000 lines or less of code. It is lately being pushed by a hippie element, who see it, naively, as a weapon against capitalism.

    In fact, the group that benefits most from open source is the big corporations that have large software budgets (Oracle, IBM, Google, Samsung, to name a few). It enables them to leverage the work of thousands of computer programmers free of charge, often saving many millions of £$€. They then use this free software to sell hardware or services and gain increased profit margins. The people who benefit least are programmers, whose wages are pushed downward by the competition from free software.

  22. Aaron Guilmette
    FAIL

    Has anyone thought about how bad Windows Phone OS would be on a tablet?

    This article really borders on flame-bait, I think.

    While the Windows Phone OS is supposed to be pretty slick, from what I understand, it still allows only native code. This design limitation would dramatically limit the immediate application availability for it. It also can only communicate with a very limited hardware set (no printers, scanners, faxes, joysticks, keyboards, USB lights, etc.

    I think at this stage of the game, if manufacturers deployed tablets with the MS phone OS, end-users would be very disappointed due to the limits of the OS at this point (such as its inability to run current Windows or Windows Mobile applications). Such disappointment would become synonymous with Windows Phone OS, and would further hamper its adoption and deployment.

    If people are somewhat frustrated with the limitations of an iPad, they'd be twice as discontent with a tablet running Windows Phone OS (what?! a Windows system that can't run my library of existing Windows apps?!).

  23. Charlie 3
    Happy

    Tablets running unix will be all the rage very soon.

    "Tablets running unix will be all the rage very soon. Most of them will be running unix."

    I would go so far as to say that is already the case...

  24. fzz

    What are tablets for?

    Whatever it is, I doubt W7's superior printer support vs WP7 would be a huge advantage.

    How many tablets already support barcode readers? How many connect to digital cameras or video recorders which provide higher resolution images than tablets' built-in lenses? Any tablets with more than 2 USB ports? How easy is it to change a tablet's battery vs a laptop's? Currently not many recharging opportunities on transoceanic or transcontinental flights.

    As I see it, tablets may be ideal for delivering content, but I've yet to be convinced they'd be any good for creating content (or just data). If data streams would be mostly inbound for tablets, MSFT is probably making a fatal error saying W7 is the right OS for tablets.

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