Microsoft might be about to launch a tablet device it would hope would compete with the Apple iPad. Its new Windows software, to be launched later this year, is designed to be used on a tablet as well as a desktop PC. It also said: “This will be a major Microsoft announcement – you will not want to miss it.”

You may have picked up in the Morning Spice headlines that business-software company, Yammer, agreed to sell itself to Microsoft for $1,2 billion. Speculation is that Microsoft may be trying to plug holes in its Office software. Office will also launch for iPad later this year, but the key feature that Yammer provides, is the ability for companies to create internal social networks within the workplace. Yammer has even been called the Facebook of the workplace.

Today, at an exclusive media event in Hollywood, Microsoft will make a “major announcement.”

They’ve been very secretive about the event and haven’t given out much information to the invitees other than that it will take place in Los Angeles, at 15h30 East Coast time.

Microsoft said “additional information regarding the specific venue” would be sent to registered attendees on Monday morning. Spicy.

Naturally, this would not be consistent with Microsoft’s style: it’s a traditional software manufacturer that licenses that software to hardware makers to ensure the broadest possible market.

However, the tablet market continues to grow. It’s already one-eighth as large as the PC market, and forecast to be 40 per cent of that market by 2016. Windows sales have also been reducing during four of the past six quarters.

Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a market research firm:

If Microsoft wants to control the entire user experience and the entire quality of their products, they have to build their own hardware.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4EbCkotKPU

This kind of thing is sure to raise Google’s hackles: the search giant is expected to unveil an own-brand tablet at its Input/Output event on 27 June.

[Source: Guardian]