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Microsoft's Big News? Reportedly To Make Own Tablet

This article is more than 10 years old.

Apparently, the big secret is out.

Microsoft yesterday invited the media to an event it plans to hold in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon. The invite said only that it was a major announcement that shouldn't be missed; in fact, the  company so far has not disclosed the actual location of the event.

The Hollywood news site TheWrap broke the news that the company has decided to build its own tablet, Apple style. Long focused in personal computers on supplying operating system software, while leaving the hardware side to others, a move into the hardware side of the business would be a bold shift in direction. Note, though, that the company all ready take the build-your-own approach with their Xbox 360 game consoles and the related Kinect motion-control interface; they made Zune music players; and they have experimented unsuccessfully  in the mobile phone business; who can forget the Kin?

According to the AllThingsD, which followed up on the report, Microsoft decided it needs to build its own tablet to better compete against Apple. The company may build tablets running ARM-based processors as well as more traditional Intel processors, ATD reports, citing "sources."

A Microsoft move into the tablet PC hardware business poses a serious threat to hardware makers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard, though they have few alternatives to continuing to building PCs based on Windows; there really aren't any other current viable options. (Well, I suppose they could use Chrome or Android; but let's not forget that Google has made a decisive move into the hardware business itself with the Motorola Mobility acquisition. Apple isn't going to license OSX. There's always Linux. In any case, Windows continues to control a vast majority of the PC OS market.)

MSFT this morning is up 35 cents, or 1.2%, to $29.69.