Launch of Windows 8 is at least a year away but,that hasn’t stopped the rumor mills from running of the possible Windows 8-based products. Today the Twitter page of Eldar Murtazin, the editor in chief of Mobile-Review.com, claims that HTC is developing its own Windows 8 tablet that will run on ARM-based processor. Similar rumor has also appeared on TFTS which suggests the ARM processor will be made by Qualcomm.
If any of this holds truth, this would be the second device that would be running Microsoft’s next operating system. Other giant in industry,namely Samsung has already released a tablet running the developers preview version of Windows 8 to the attendees of last week’s BUILD Conference.And very rightly so, those very first Windows 8 products are already up for grabs on eBay. HTC would seem to be natural to manufacture a Windows 8 tablet since the smartphone maker has already released and will continue to ship smartphones based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system.
However,if the tablet does run on an ARM-based processor, then it also means that any application that runs on the device will have to work with the processor. Last week, Microsoft has also confirmed that Windows 8 won’t be able to run any applications made for x86 processors, made by companies like Intel and AMD, on an ARM-based product. The two processors have considerable number of architectural differences that would prevent this kind of cross-development. Also,Microsoft wanted to keep the malware programs from being able to infect both versions of Windows 8.
