This is Dell's Windows 8 tablet
Dell is working on a Windows 8 tablet; we know this because Dell told us that they are planning to launch a Windows 8 tablet, easy enough. What we did not know is what will be driving the tablet under the hood, at least, until now.
Context & Ripple Effects
Dell has been signaling this move since last October's Dell World, where it framed Windows 8 hardware as the answer to disappointing Android traction, and Michael Dell made it explicit in March by promising an enterprise tablet on the exact day Windows 8 ships. What was missing until now was the silicon story — and with Lenovo claiming first-to-market status and HP's own x86 Windows 8 tablet render surfacing in April, the under-the-hood detail is the competitive currency.
The timing matters because Intel published its Windows 8 tablet checklist only weeks ago, setting the bar every OEM design must clear. That this leak traveled same-day through eight outlets including The Verge, Wired.co.uk, and ZDNet shows how much attention the enterprise-tablet slot commands before Microsoft's OS even ships.
First-order effects
- Dell moves from promise to product in the enterprise Windows 8 tablet race, now competing directly with Lenovo and HP for corporate buyers who want a day-one device backed by Michael Dell's ship-date commitment.
Second-order effects
- Dell's April acquisitions — Wyse for virtualization and thin clients, Make Technologies for legacy-application modernization — give the tablet a software-and-management wrapper rivals must answer, pushing the contest beyond raw hardware specs toward who controls the enterprise endpoint stack.
- Staggered Ivy Bridge rollouts across Apple, HP, Dell, Sony, and Toshiba mean launch timing becomes a differentiator, with each OEM jockeying against Intel's platform cadence rather than shipping simultaneously.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Windows 8 tablets settle into the corporate fleet as managed endpoints — thin clients to re-hosted, cloud-friendly legacy apps — folding tablet procurement into existing desktop-management budgets instead of consumer-style retail channels.
The trend: PC makers are repositioning the tablet as an enterprise-managed endpoint, racing to pair Windows 8 hardware with virtualization and application-modernization stacks timed to Intel's platform roadmap.