HP is working on x86 Windows 8 tablet, rough render exposed
Windows 8 news comes from a variety of sources. Sometimes it comes from the Windows 8 fountain and other times it comes from sources familiar with company's plans. — This time around we have some information from a trusted source …
Context & Ripple Effects
HP enters this leak with its tablet strategy in ruins: the company paid $1.2 billion for Palm, shipped two TouchPads, then killed all webOS hardware, and reviewers found the unreleased 7-inch TouchPad Go to be little more than a shrunken TouchPad. February's Windows 8 SKUs appearing on HP.com was the first hint that HP planned to re-enter tablets on someone else's operating system.
The timing is no accident: Intel published its Windows 8 tablet checklist on April 13, giving OEMs a concrete spec sheet for x86 slates, and Ivy Bridge-based rollouts from HP, Dell, Sony, Apple, and Toshiba are rumored to be staggered through the year. That Neowin's single-sourced render was picked up the same day by Softpedia, ZDNet, VR-Zone, PC World, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, Business Insider, and SlashGear shows how starved the coverage cycle is for signs of HP's next move.
First-order effects
- If the rumor holds, HP's tablet lineup would shift from its own dead-end webOS hardware to an x86 Windows 8 slate built to Intel's published checklist — a direct replacement play aimed at the business customers who bought nothing from the TouchPad line.
- Because the report is single-sourced and unconfirmed by HP, enterprise and channel buyers evaluating 2012 tablet refresh cycles have a name-brand option to watch but nothing yet to buy against.
Second-order effects
- Rival PC makers working from the same Intel checklist now face pressure to have their own Windows 8 designs ready at launch, turning the holiday-cycle tablet window into a race rather than an HP-specific story.
- Microsoft gains another marquee OEM publicly committed to x86 Windows 8 hardware, strengthening the platform's pitch against iPad in exactly the enterprise segment where HP's brand carries weight.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward Wintel consolidation of the tablet market's business segment: after HP's Palm bet failed, the major PC vendors appear set to compete on Windows 8 slates rather than proprietary OSes, leaving open-source alternatives like the webOS path Whitman once floated as a long-shot.
- If staggered Ivy Bridge launches hold, tablet differentiation among HP, Dell, and peers shifts away from silicon availability toward industrial design, dockables, and enterprise management — the levers left when everyone runs the same chip and OS.
The trend: After proprietary mobile OS bets collapsed, the major PC makers are rebuilding their tablet strategies on x86 Windows 8 hardware timed to Intel's Ivy Bridge cadence.