Microsoft Co-Founder Reckons That New Surface Tablet Won’t Hurt OEMs

When Microsoft revealed their new ARM-based Surface tablet PC a little over two weeks ago, it appeared that they had made their own device, because they didn’t have confidence in their OEM partners building a tablet good enough to beat Apple’s iPad tablet, as we reported. This move by Microsoft was seen as a rather negative one, since OEMs had always had a symbiotic relationship with them, but now they would compete head-on with their primary business of making hardware. It appears that this has prompted several OEMs to scrap development of such tablets and we reported that one of the biggest, HP, had also scrapped plans on bringing out a Windows 8 tablet due to the presence of Microsoft’s one.

Now however, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, has gone on record in an interview as saying that it’s possible for the two to peacefully coexist with the following somewhat cryptic statement: “I actually believe you can have the best of both worlds. You can have a rich eco-system of manufacturers and you can have a few signature devices that show off, wow, what’s the difference between a tablet and a PC?” Here, he appears to be defending Microsoft’s decision to create the Surface tablet, as it creates a reference standard that all other manufacturers will have to aspire to. We’ll see soon enough what Microsoft’s true intentions are. The one hour interview can be seen in full at the link below.