Microsoft will be late to market with Windows 8, and lagging well behind competitors such as Apple and Google, which have refined their OSes for the fast-changing tablet market, wrote JP Gownder, vice president and research director at Forrester, in a blog entry.
About 46 percent of U.S. consumers “yearned” for a Windows 8 tablet in the first quarter this year, but that has dropped to 25 percent in the third quarter, Forrester said in its study. Microsoft has not officially announced a release date for Windows 8, but Intel executives expect the OS to arrive on PCs by mid-to-late next year.
Microsoft’s touch-oriented Windows 8 will work on x86 processors, which are used in PCs, and ARM processors, which are used in most tablets today. Windows 8 will join a tablet OS field that includes Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and BlackBerry’s Playbook OS 2, which is due for release early next year.
Microsoft will also have to provide a unique experience through Windows 8 to attract consumer attention. Tablet features are changing rapidly and prices have been falling, driven by the recent releases of the US$199 Amazon Kindle Fire and the $249 Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet, Gownder wrote.
“They’ll have to take a lesson from Amazon’s product strategists, who fundamentally changed the tablet product experience by leading with content and services rather than feeds and speeds, at a compelling price point,” Gownder wrote.
Customers on average are willing to spend $308 for a tablet, Forrester said.
Top PC makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell have already announced plans to release tablets with Windows 8. Microsoft’s Windows 7 is already being used on some tablets like Dell’s Latitude ST, HP’s Slate 2 and Fujitsu’s Stylistic Q550, which are targeted at businesses.