It had to come to this. The winds of change have been blowing strong for many a months now, and with pretty much all major Microsoft hardware partners shying away from Windows RT, Dell also seems like it is playing a wait and see game with the OS.
Windows on ARM (or Windows RT as Microsoft for some reason decided to call it) launched with great fanfare and anticipation in the fall of 2012. Five companies started developing hardware solutions powered by the new platform — now only one actively remains.
With Dell seemingly out, Microsoft is now the only company that is selling Windows RT based products.
The last third party vendor, Dell, has stopped selling its lone product the XPS 10, which is now listed as unavailable on its store. Instead, the company now directs customers towards its Latitude 10 tablet powered by Windows 8 as an alternative.
Asus, Lenovo and Samsung have over the past few months have announced that they are dropping out of the Windows RT game.
According to these companies the battery life and performance improvements in Intel’s latest Atom processors are reasons enough to finally say goodbye to the platform. And it goes without saying that the chip giant will further improve its affordable CPUs that can run Windows 8 Pro.
Of course, there is always a possibility that Dell may announce a Windows RT product in the near future, as Neil Hand, the head of the company’s tablet and high-end PC business recently stated that it still plans to introduce new Windows RT devices going forward.
But nothing has been announced as of right now, leaving the original Surface RT and the refreshed Surface 2 the only two remaining Windows RT products.
These are reported to soon be joined by Nokia’s Windows RT slate, as the Finnish company is said to be working on an ARM tablet powered by the Snapdragon 800 processor and running Windows RT 8.1.
