If you thought the market would be flooded with cheap, crappy Windows 8 RT tablets come-November, you thought wrong. Microsoft is reportedly making a concerted effort to keep the Windows RT tablet market as uncrowded as possible. Let me explain.
The Chinese Economic Times reports that Microsoft is forcing NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments to each choose only two OEM partners that will be allowed to develop Windows RT tablets at the launch of the new OS in October.
Lenovo and Asus are NVIDIA’s picks, Qualcomm opted for Samsung and HP while TI nabbed Toshiba according to the report.
These five vendors will be producing ARM-based Windows RT tablets from October and come January, Microsoft lift the licensing restrictions on the operating system.
Will other OEMs who were left out in the cold be able to get their Windows RT tablets to the floor of CES 2013? Probably not, but it won’t stop them from showing us the hardware that will be running it before promising a March release date. [Chinese Economic Times via Unwired Review]