Microsoft working on Windows 7 tablets
Steve Ballmer has made it clear that Microsoft is still working on Windows 7 tablets, despite the Courier being canned earlier this year.
Before Apple launched the iPad and blew everyone away with its take on the tablet form factor, Microsoft was well in the hunt. Company CEO Steve Ballmer took to the stage at CES 2010 and unveiled several tablets running on the Windows operating system.
The Courier was notable by its absence, but it still came as a shock when Microsoft canned the device in May. No reason for the canning have ever been given, apart from the usual baloney about multiple products always being developed, many of which won’t ever make it into production. At around the same time, Hewlett-Packard canned the HP Slate after acquiring Palm, and WebOS along with it.
Things were looking bad for Microsoft, with many manufacturers clearly rejecting Windows 7 as being unsuitable for use on tablets meant to compete with the iPad. However, new Windows-based tablets have been unveiled since, and Ballmer has moved to assure the doubters that Microsoft is still in the game.
According to The Register, Ballmer told Microsoft’s annual Financial Analysts Meeting:
We’ve got a push right now, right now with our hardware partners. Some of you will say: ‘When? When?’ As soon as they are ready, they will be shipping as soon as they are ready.
It is job-one urgency around here, nobody’s sleeping at this point. So we are working with those partners, not just to deliver something, but to deliver products that people really want to go buy.
Apple has done an interesting job of putting together a product. They’ve certainly sold more than I’d like them to sell.
That last line is a reference to the three million iPads Apple has so far sold. There’s no doubting this level of sales has surprised and impressed analysts and Apple’s competitors alike, Microsoft included.
However, it seems Redmond is hard at work on Windows 7 tablets, busy teaming with hardware partners to get these products onto the market as soon as possible. Let’s just hope that these, when they finally arrive, do better than the Kin did.
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