Microsoft has been working on Windows on ARM (WOA) for a while now, actually a long while, if we consider the image below. It appears that the software giant in Redmond has been working on this idea since 2010, even before the first iPad was unveiled. A recent post on the Building Windows 8 blog shows two photos of an early development build of Windows running on ARM prototype hardware.
Well, these are dated back to 22 January 2010, which is a week before the iPad was announced, on the 27th. Microsoft waited a year more to reveal WOA to the general public, during the CES 2011 press conference. It’s now pretty clear that MS wants to rely on an ARM ecosystem and it pre-empted the iPad with this product, that actually took a longer while to develop than they estimated. Steve Sinofsky post mentioned above shows that it’s pretty complicated to optimize the Windows experience on ARM than porting all the code from one architecture to another.
With all the money and time put into this idea, I bet that we’ll see a big marketing push for WOA and a bunch of partners to jump on the Windows 8 bandwagon as soon as the OS launches. Nokia is the first to come to mind actually…
