Insert LotR reference here
For some years now Microsoft has has ‘three screens' as a major PR bullet-point. This refers to the phone, the PC and the TV, which Microsoft currently represents itself through Windows Phone, Windows and Xbox.
But at its worldwide partner conference recently, Windows Phone boss Andy Lees took to the stage to share his vision of a ‘unified ecosystem' - which essentially means a common platform across all devices. You can see Lees keynote embedded below. His bit starts at four minutes, but just before that you can see fellow Brit Steve Clayton, who has HEXUS to thank for his early TV training.
This is one of the key quotes, which you can find at 09:40: "One of the key important things here, though, is the change that's yet to happen, but it's about to happen, and that is the bringing together of these devices into a unified ecosystem, because at the core of the device itself it's possible to be common across phones, PCs, and TVs, and even other things, because the price drops dramatically. Then it will be a single ecosystem. We won't have an ecosystem for PCs, and an ecosystem for phones, one for tablets."
He went on to stress that Microsoft is not going to produce a version of Windows Phone 7 for tablets because "...that is in conflict with this strategy - we view the tablet as a sort of PC. We want people to be able to do the sorts of things they expect on a PC, on a tablet."
Earlier Lees had referred to the test boards of Windows 8 running on ARM as being smaller than a phone. He observed that you can now get so much of what you need on a single SoC that only a tiny motherboard is required.
He was clearly setting the scene for Windows to be the first grand unified platform across all devices, and This is my next says this tallies with stuff it's been hearing about this unification happening in around four year's time. That would make Windows 9, or whatever, the first OS to run on PCs, mobile devices, and CE consoles. In fact, it might not even be called Windows at all, which seems like a good idea if Microsoft is trying to do something truly disruptive.
Meanwhile analyst Asymco asks if the tablet is a PC. For the record we don't think it is - it's a distinct category of its own right now - but other people do. It doesn't come to a firm conclusion, but does insist that the "PC market as we know it is in the end game."
