Launched with great fanfare in October 2012 - and now with 20:20 hindsight - it was the wrong defence to Apple and Googles unassailable offense in the ARM wars.

This is an opinion-based article – facts are important but perceptions are more critical.

Let’s first look at RT.

RT was Microsoft’s official entrée to tablet based, ARM* computing - although it had prior mobile experience with Windows Phone 7 and the Metro Tile User Interface (UI).

*ARM is a family of low cost, power and heat efficient; reduced instruction set; processors that are typically 20x times less powerful than an entry level Intel/AMD x86 processor. ARM programs are not compatible with x86 Mac or Windows. iOS and Android were developed to specifically to use ARM in smartphones and tablets.

FACT: RT is a very competent, robust, operating system (OS) that bought Windows 8, look and feel, to low powered, lower cost, tablets. Despite having a functional version of Office Home and Student, as well as capable mail, calendar, contacts and a small, but growing, number of apps - its fatal flaw was that it did not run x86 programs. Consumers never embraced RT as Apple and Android offered more compelling options.

Apple or Android sold heaps of tablets – Microsoft did not scratch the Surface

Apple popularised the tablet. It created a niche consumer market for lower cost, lower powered, lower priced, quasi-computing devices.

I use the term quasi for both iOS and Android because neither can be considered a replacement for a desktop computer.

Microsoft was third cab off the rank and could not build an RT ecosystem that compelled consumers or business to use it. Of those that I know who bought a Surface RT all are happy with the quality and the Office software - but dissatisfied with the range of apps. ‘Coulda, woulda, shoulda bought an iPad.’

FACT: iOS and Android are brilliant content consumption devices – movies, music, e-books, web surfing, email, and apps galore but are lacking compared to Windows/Office x86 for serious content creation.

Go on the offence

Microsoft panicked. Its traditional desktop domain was under threat from tablets that, in reality, only addressed a new lightweight, consumer, computing paradigm. Neither Windows nor Mac was an endangered species – only the bulky desktop form factor.

FACT: ARM based tablets are significantly less powerful than an x86 desktop, they don’t run USB devices like printers and they are only capable of running simple apps – not complex programs like Office, MYOB, AutoCad or databases.

Microsoft’s dogmatic solution

Spend billions of dollars of shareholder’s funds – it could afford to - in developing RT and emulating Apple and Google by launching its own Surface hardware. Ignominiously in the end, it also wrote off nearly a billion dollars in unsold inventory.

It did not see the danger signs

Microsoft apparently stopped listening to its OEM partners. It ignored some very impassioned warnings about RT and Surface – whether due to blind faith that it what it was doing was right or just plain overconfidence.

HP - then the world’s largest computing company said that it did not see a market for RT rejecting it completely - embracing Android with vigour instead.

Samsung had an each way bet and made a small number of RT tablets - confined to a test market in Europe where it could do least harm. Its success with Android however is legendary.

Asus, Acer, Dell, and Lenovo are still hurting from their RT folly - there are warehouses are full of these now unsellable products. These OEM’s are unwilling to admit that Microsoft leveraged them into entering a market that they knew could not work.

In August 2012, Acer publically begged Microsoft to think twice about RT and its Surface strategy essentially saying that it could not hope to compete in the ARM’s race and it should not get into hardware manufacture in competition with its OEM’s - sound advice that would have saved it billions. It would have possibly averted its OEM’s dabbling with, and achieving some success with, Android.

By early 2013, almost every analyst and commentator had declared RT dead. My retail sources consistently confirmed that, despite a substantial marketing campaign, sales were almost non-existent. Tablet buyers wanted an iPad or a Galaxy Tab – and not even the inclusion of Office Home and Student or a free $100 keyboard could sway sales.

Those same sources reported excellent interest in, and later sales of, Windows 8 based hybrids, convertibles, and Ultrabook – because ARM based iOS and Android tablet users were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of peripheral and network connectivity, and business app functionality. The consumer tablet fad was slowing, maturing, and tipping in a substantial part; back to heaver duty bring your own devices (BYOD).

FACT: Microsoft may have been better to put those RT funds into helping OEMs and suppliers bring Windows to smaller x86 form factors. Microsoft/Intel/AMD could have done more to make both Windows and x86 processors more power efficient (as is happening now with Haswell Core and Silvermont Atom). These new processors bring Windows to tablets albeit that they cost more than ARM – they also do so much more.

The wash up

In the US a class action is being raised against ‘Microsoft’s materially false and misleading conduct’ and although it is more shareholder oriented it could support a request for a refund*.

Local retailers are concerned that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commissions more generous return rules could assist RT users to demand refunds*.

(*Note that most retailers have manufacturers price and return protection and have no grounds to refuse a valid refund request.)

Is RT dead or not?

Last week Microsoft said that it was ‘committed to ARM and that new stuff was on the way’. What it perhaps really needed to say is that it is committed to low cost computing and that it needs to offer a unified Windows experience – ecosystem - from smartphones to servers and everywhere in between.

Microsoft’s interest should be in actively ensuring Windows remains true to its x86 roots and does everything it can to extend the range of hardware platforms that offer full or a substantial part of Windows functionality via file and program compatibility. It can best do this by listening to users to ensure the Metro tile interface is the best possible touch platform and ensure that its staple of serious users that need keyboard and mouse have an advanced desktop experience.

It needs to fend off Android that is moving towards the desktop - albeit that Key Lime Pie Version 5 is required to harness future, more powerful, ARM processors. Interestingly Intel already supports an unofficial Androidx86 project to run on desktop processors. Google’s intentions are clear – Android everywhere – and Microsoft needs to counter this or ignore it at its peril.

Windows Phone 8 has been a success achieving number three in the smartphone OS stakes in a record, short, time. It has the potential to relegate Apple iPhone to that position if it gets OEM support right. Microsoft needs at least another six active OEM manufacturers* like Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, HTC, LG, and Samsung pushing Windows Phone as the BYOD alternative to iOS - and cede the consumer market to Android

(*Note these manufacturers have some experience and success with Windows Phone but may be waiting to see what happens with Microsoft and Nokia).

Whatever the outcome Microsoft is a large company that should know what it is doing. I am heartened by its recent backflips over Windows 8.1 (start button and desktop back), Xbox (not requiring it to be always connected and optional use of Kinect), and a host of other user-friendly policies that give me some assurance that it does have honourable intentions.