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Microsoft gave an early technical glimpse of the next generation of Windows at CES but the company didn't spill the beans on the user interface, packaging, pricing or precise timing.
During demonstrations showing Windows running on various devices, Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, said the unnamed next version will support emerging System on a Chip (SoC) architectures from Intel, AMD and ARM-based systems from NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. ARM rumors had surfaced before Christmas.
Sinofsky indicated that Microsoft is making the announcement at CES to allow greater collaboration among "our expanded ecosystem" of partners in areas that include PCs and tablets.
The promise is that the SoC approach will lead to improved battery life and reliability, critical for devices such as tablets where Microsoft has been struggling.
Questions linger, of course. "At the end of the day it's all about the user interface...which is much more important than the architecture," says IDC analyst Bob O'Donnell. "And the really critical thing is it's about the apps" and about making various devices -- PCs, phones, tablets-- "work together cohesively and coherently."
Microsoft's current operating system for computers, Windows 7 has been doing well but O'Donnell doesn't believe talk of the new Windows, whether it will eventually be known as Windows 8 or something else, will hurt Win 7 sales. In fact, he says, today's announcement "helps stem this concern that Microsoft is not relevant in the tablet market."
While Sinofsky wouldn't specify when a new version of Windows would emerge, he did say that "somewhere between 24 and 36 months between releases seems about right." Windows 7 launched in the fall of 2009.
Microsoft also demonstrated a 4-inch thin new version of its Surface tabletop platform, with a huge slab of protective Gorilla Glass (from Corning) and technology in which every underlying pixel is a camera. Early commercial customer: Royal Bank of Canada.
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