In the meeting with investors that the Microsoft leadership held on Thursday, the future was discussed, how could it be otherwise. One of the issues that was put on the table is the paper that Windows RT and ARM chips will play in the company's future. The answer is clear, those of Redmond see great potential in this type of chip for its connectivity. And here comes the surprising part, they believe that it will be essential in a landscape in which phones merge with tablets.
The poor sales of Windows RT
The question was in the air and had to be asked. Sales of devices with Microsoft's lightest operating system weren't good enough. In fact, figures were added to the results and the company had lost close to 900 million with Surface RT. To this must be added the abandonment of the platform by such notorious names as Samsung and ASUS.
Even so, those of Redmond will continue to bet on it, according to Terry Myerson, Vice President of Operating Systems, who stressed that the two families of chips, Intel and ARM, are really important to them.
Windows RT as OS for phablets
Myerson used very specific language in which the term RT was not present. He spoke of the convergence between tablets and phones and then referred to the platform as ARM devices. He put phones and tablets that use this type of chip in the same bag and positively highlighted their connectivity and its energy efficiency.
When he talked about the tablet format, he avoided saying Windows RT tablets and preferred to use ARM tablets. It could be considered a mistake but it is not the first symptom that the RT particle has disappeared from Microsoft's language, perhaps due to the negative aspects to which it is linked in the collective memory of consumers.
In turn, it opens the door to a single operating system for both formats: tablet and phablet, a unification that could satisfy users by improving familiarity. Nokia, and its recently bought device division, could be instrumental in this.
Source: CNET