This week, Intel held their latest financials conference call with CEO Paul Otellini. During the call, he discussed the companies future plans for products, including mobile phones. Otellini mentioned that Intel has plans to put Windows 8 onto mobile phones.
That"s right, Intel openly talked about the possibility of having a mobile phone running Windows 8. The only holdback in the near future with a full OS running on a mobile device is battery life. Intel was quoted, via ZDnet.com, that Windows 8 could run on their lowest-power Intel processor.
We have the ability to put our lowest-power Intel processors running Windows 8, or “next-generation Windows,” into phones, because it"s the same OS stack. And I look at that as an upside opportunity for us.
After Microsoft announced that Windows 8 will be able to run on a wide variety of processors, including ARM, the possibilities of running Windows 8 anywhere became a reality.
It"s still unclear what direction Microsoft wishes to pursue with Windows 8 on mobile devices. Although it would be great to have Windows 8 running on a tablet PC, would Microsoft ever want to release a line of mobile phones running Windows 8? Windows 8 is still more than a year away, and with Microsoft"s newly launched Windows Phone 7 operating system, it wouldn"t make much sense to replace the OS after a years time, but perhaps a slimmed down version of Windows 8 might be ideal for a dual-OS phone.