Mockups from enthusiastic designers aside, it looks like Microsoft has no plans to bring Windows Phone 7 to tablet-sized computers. At an event in Singapore, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the company is focusing on “putting Windows phone 7 in phones,” which isn’t really all that surprising. Heck, the OS has “phone” in the name, right?

But a large part of the appeal of Apple’s iPad is that the tablet features a touch-friendly OS that was built from the ground up to be used without a keyboard and mouse. The same can’t be said of Windows 7, the operating system Microsoft is pushing for tablets. I’ve tested a number of relatively inexpensive convertible tablet-style netbooks running Windows XP or Windows 7 over the past few months, and I have to say, none of them really provide an excellent handheld computing experience. It just takes too much work to do simple things like scroll through web pages or enter text.

HP hasn’t ruled out releasing a Windows 7 tablet, but the company is also now focusing on building slate computers equipped with the Palm WebOS operating system which, like iPhone OS, was designed from the ground up for finger-friendly input. And dozens of PC makers have been demonstrating Google Android tablets.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for Microsoft to consider making its upcoming touch-friendly Windows Phone 7 OS available to tablet makers as well?

via WMExperts

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10 replies on “Microsoft has no plans for Windows Phone 7 tablets”

  1. Microsoft is not on the same level as Apple and Google when it comes to product offerings. They have products for every situation and makes no sense to use a phone OS for a tablet. Apple and Google do it because that is all they have for an OS. What MS can do is take Win7 and the WP7 UI and mesh them for a Win7 tablet edition. I am sure that with the power of Win7 and the touch UI of Windows phone 7 put together nothing will come close to it in capabilities, performance, and usability, etc. But for the most part, most people do not need a tablet at all and only time will tell as tablet sales will plateau and drop just as the iPhone sales has shown as people start to realize how much it does not do compared to other options.

  2. I’m just not buying that Win7 can’t handle the touch that WP7 can; Win7 is just as capable of running Silverlight (which is what we’re really talking about here when we say the phone’s ‘OS’), but what is lacking is a touch-centric shell (ala a new Explorer). Not *nearly* as daunting a task as creating an entirely new OS for a device (and not even Apple did that)

    1. The problem is that most Windows 7 applications weren’t designed for touch
      control. Every single iPhone, Android, and WebOS app was built *only* for
      touch.

      What this means it that a Windows 7 tablet can run MS Office 2010, but the
      experience is kind of awful because Microsoft just tacked a few touch
      gestures on top of the operating system to try to emulate the experience of
      using a mouse and keyboard.

      You could definitely develop a custom UI for Windows 7 that would make an
      excellent program launcher for a touchscreen device. But it wouldn’t make
      the experience of using apps any better — and it would be a whole lot
      simpler just to run a lighter weight OS which would also give you the
      benefit of being able to use a lower power processor and less memory.

  3. Yeah the iPad gets over a million in sales because they based a tablet off their phone OS (something familiar to every one of their users). Microsoft isn’t interested in that at all. That’s if they don’t care about making money that is

  4. If Ballmer does not have a team looking at how to make the WP7 OS slate/tablet/pad compatible then he is making a very big mistake.

    I can see that they need time to stabilize the OS but I can’t see any reason why we should not be able to buy a WP7 OS based tablet for Christmas 2011.
    MS has the money in the bank to take the risk and there are lots of people that want a viable alternative to the Apple/Google ecosystems.

  5. Someone should tell that to the people working on the WP7 project. I know one and he tells a different story.

  6. Ballmer’s WP7/Tablet statement would hold true if they released another sku..maybe Windows Slate 7. Why they would feel the need to do that I’m not sure other than has additional software components. The Metro UI makes alot of sense…I’m certain they know it.

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