During the Dell World conference in Austin, Dell’s Vice-Chairman and President of the company’s PC business Jeffrey Clarke spoke to analysts and mentioned that he told Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that using the name “Windows RT” was a bad idea because it would cause widespread confusion, due to its incompatibility with common desktop applications.
In fact, Clarke told Ballmer that Windows RT should be renamed since it could not run Windows applications. Instead, Ballmer argued back stating that the Windows brand was too important of a franchise to not be used with Windows RT, or what it used to be called, Windows on ARM. According to the report, Microsoft has offered relaxed return policies for the Surface RT, just for customers who thought they could run Windows applications on it. However, an argument in support of Microsoft would be that regardless of how the company branded Windows RT, consumers would still have to learn about the differences between Windows RT and Windows 8. Do you think Microsoft should have named the operating system a little better to avoid confusion or do consumers need to learn more about the operating system before purchasing it?
Thanks to Markus for the tip!
Further reading: Dell, Microsoft, Windows RT
