ASUS pulls out of Windows RT due to financial losses and ‘industry sentiment’
This isn't a huge shock, given that ASUS has already publicly expressed woes about poor sales of its Windows RT products, but CEO Jerry Shen's latest comments have a surprising edge of finality to them.
Context & Ripple Effects
ASUS was one of the earliest OEMs to commit to Microsoft's ARM-based tablet platform, unveiling the Vivo Tab RT at IFA Berlin in August 2012 alongside its x86 sibling. But the platform was already wobbling: Acer had delayed its own Windows RT tablets in October 2012 explicitly citing Microsoft's move into first-party hardware, and by May 2013 ASUS itself was pivoting toward smaller Windows 8 tablets on Intel silicon.
CEO Jerry Shen's remarks convert that drift into an official exit, citing losses and 'industry sentiment.' The story travelled widely the same week — WSJ, The Verge, AnandTech, TechCrunch and others picked it up — with Computerworld reporting that NVIDIA simultaneously cut its Tegra revenue forecast, underlining how much of the supply chain was levered to RT's fate.
First-order effects
- Microsoft loses one of the few name-brand RT hardware makers, shrinking the platform's shelf presence to Surface plus a thinning OEM roster just ahead of the holiday build cycle.
- NVIDIA takes the direct hit among suppliers — its Tegra chips powered most RT devices including ASUS's Vivo Tab RT, hence the same-week revenue forecast reduction reported by Computerworld.
Second-order effects
- Acer's 2012 hesitation now reads as the template: every remaining OEM weighs whether to fund ARM-based Windows SKUs that compete against Microsoft's own Surface pricing, accelerating reallocation of engineering budgets toward Intel-based Windows 8 designs like the small tablets ASUS announced in May 2013.
- ARM's PC ambitions lose their flagship OEM showcase, pressuring Qualcomm, NVIDIA and TI to justify Windows-on-ARM investment against weakening partner demand.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points to a structural rule in post-PC Windows: when Microsoft competes with its own licensees on first-party hardware, OEM commitment to the software platform becomes conditional and reversible — a dynamic that began with Acer's delay and is now confirmed by ASUS's exit.
- If RT's collapse holds, the Wintel x86 axis re-consolidates tablet-and-laptop silicon supply, leaving ARM vendors to seek volume in phones and embedded rather than clamshells and slates.
The trend: PC OEMs are abandoning Microsoft's ARM-based Windows platform as first-party Surface competition makes RT volumes uneconomic, pulling the industry back toward x86 Windows 8.