Microsoft to delay tablet OS release until 2012

Business reporters, Bloomberg have announced that Microsoft will not be releasing a specifically designed tablet operating system this year, and instead, plan to launch the OS in September 2012.

This report is a contradiction to earlier indications that tablets supporting Windows 8 would begin to appear in the third quarter of this year, with Dell’s Streak tablet leading the way.

If Bloomberg’s report turns out to be true then Microsoft will have missed out on a big opportunity to make a serious stab at the tablet market, and will instead have essentially surrendered market dominance to Google and Apple.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst for Gartner Inc, thinks that Microsoft are shooting themselves in the foot with this late release:

“If 2011 is the year of tablet wars, Microsoft will be awfully late suiting up for that battle,” he said. “It’s not a good position to be in; battle lines are being drawn, land is being grabbed, users are being evangelised and spending money.”

Bloomberg predict that an autumn 2012 release will require an enormous leap of faith from tablet manufacturers to support it, as it will be untested software featuring in devices likely to be up against the release of iPad3. Chances are it will also be a full version behind Google’s Android OS, which is expected to have evolved into v4.0 by that point.

Spokesmen for Microsoft were unavailable to comment.

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