Windows 8 for ARM-based processors is likely to be a huge new audience for Microsoft"s new operating system. Now, according to a new story at Digitimes, the company is letting its ARM-based processor creators pick their hardware partners to create notebooks that will run the ARM version of Windows 8.
The report, which cites unnamed sources, says that the ARM processor companies were allowed to pick a major and a minor notebook partner for their Windows 8 ARM machines, although the story does not make clear what the difference is between a major and a minor partner.
Qualcomm is cited in the article to be working on Windows 8 ARM notebooks for Samsung and Sony. Texas Instruments will reportedly collaborate on notebooks with Samsung and Toshiba. Finally the newcomer in the ARM processor family, NVIDIA, will develop Windows 8 ARM notebooks with Lenovo and Acer. The story says that Samsung. Toshiba and Lenovo are considered to be the major partners.
The story points out that Asus, the world"s fifth biggest maker of notebooks, has not been selected as either a major or minor partner for making Windows 8 ARM notebooks. Asus, is using NVIDIA"s Tegra processors for its Android tablet products, including the upcoming Transformer Prime tablet which will be the first to use NVIDIA"s new quad-core Tegra 3 processor.