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Whither Goes PC OEMs

Tim Bajarin has been an astute observer of the PC and Server scenes. His comments at TechOpinion imply that Windows 8 is gaining momentum on PCs and tablets especially among large PC OEMs like HP. No argument there because  the PC OEMs, who have lost market to the tablets and smartphones because users who want to simply consume media and link to the Web, have Android and iOS devices more than equal to the task and are no longer buying notebooks or laptops.

But Tim dismisses Android for having a breakneck development schedule for the past two years and poor connections to the business community. He is missing two key points here. First, Android, had to race along to catch up with and now move ahead of iOS devices. Android 4 compared to iOS5 finds Android moving ahead again in multitasking, social media connections [borrowing the People tab blatantly from Windows Metro], UI customization, and NFC-Near Field Communication for mobile wallets and document exchanges. Meanwhile iOS5 is seeing serious hiccups with its battery control and Siri voice implementation. But underlying Android 4 was the unification of smartphone and tablet versions of Android.

Now as Android prospers because developers have so many choices [Java, FLEX+Flash, Windev, and QT among other tools that are cross platform except to versus the Objective C approach of Apple iOS – Google can not only unite its tablet and smartphone versions but also put the releases on a more OEM friendly schedule. But speaking of OEM friendly, it is notable that only major Asian players like Samsung nd HTC with one exception of Motorola now owned by Google   have been able to offer Android in smartphones and tablet form that could compete with Apple.

The second point is that Android offers the business community a lot more than Tim is giving Google credit for. First, with padphones like Asus Padfone  and Motorola Atrix and tabtops like Asus Tranformer series powered with quad core chips like Nvidia’s Tegra3 , suddenly PC-computing power and displays are available to Androids  that can  function as laptops yet also deliver touch and sensor driven goodies as well.  And all of this computing power can be linked to the Cloud with Googles full range of services that are getting wider acceptance in the business community. And that stable of 500,000 Android apps is getting better and better as well as growing fast.

Finally, Microsoft has to stand and deliver. The design of Windows 8 is certaily a winner. But the implementation and operation of Windows 8 is a whole new ballgame. Last time Microsoft delivered a major OS rewrite, it was a disaster with Vista. What the word on the street is that .DLL Hell is still a problem in Redmond. So PC OEMs really have to hedge their bets and do a reverse of Asus  CEO Jonney Shih and invest in Android to cover their OS bets.

1 thought on “Whither Goes PC OEMs”

  1. The previous rewrite of the OS that Microsoft made was with the Windows NT series, which became XP, Vista, 7. As far as I know, 8 is just more things on pretty much the same thing (obviously enlarged a lot in 2 decades, but still, essentially the same thing)

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