In a recent interview, Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer, Peter Klein, revealed that the company is ready to create tablets in various form factors in response to consumer demand. So for those of you looking for Microsoft to compete against the iPad mini or Kindle Fire, you may just get your wish!
When asked if Microsoft would consider creating a 7-inch Surface tablet, Microsoft’s Peter Klein responded by saying, “We’re really set up for that. The notion of flexibility and scalability of the operating system is actually intrinsic to our vision and our strategy. So I think we’re really set up to deliver the most versatile set of experiences across form factors, whether that’s 4-inch, 5-inch, 7-inch, 8-inch, 10-inch, 13-inch. And along with our partners in the ecosystem, we’ll work through that based on underlying demand.”
Klein also revealed that Microsoft was getting closer to creating a uniform “service” across all form factors. In other words, Microsoft wants an app to work on both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, basically allowing that app to be used regardless of form factor. Klein also added that Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 shared the same kernel. “You have the same core code base driving form factors from 4 inches all the way up to 27-inch all-in-ones and everything in between. If you think about our developer platform, we’ve done a lot of the hard work so now applications can scale up or down depending on the size of the form factor. So core to our vision of delivering a set of services across form factors is the scalability of the operating system.” Would you consider purchasing a 7-inch Surface tablet?
