Microsoft reportedly won’t have a tablet OS to go up against the iPad and Android offerings until 2012.
According to Bloomberg, public testing of the new version of Windows will occur at the end of 2011.
There were also recent reports that Dell was set to launch a tablet using the Windows tablet OS by January 2012.
The next version of Windows will be designed to be more suited to touchscreen devices, but if the reports are true, then we won’t see it until next year, facing off against other established tablet OS makers, such as Apple and Google.
It would also be up against newer competitors in the tablet industry, such as HP and RIM.
The next version of Windows will run on both PCs and tablets with chip architectures from Intel, AMD and ARM.