Recent remarks by a Microsoft exec who noted there won't be three different Windows variants in the future have set off a storm of speculation -- just about all of which is dead wrong.
Microsoft Executive Vice President Julie Larson-Green recently told attendees of a UBS technology conference that Microsoft was not going to have three different Windows SKUs (Windows Phone, Windows RT and Windows 8.x). She didn't say how many Microsoft ultimately plans to have, but some believe the answer is one, given Microsoft's "One Microsoft" mission and creation this year of a unified operating-system engineering team.
I've seen folks claiming Larson-Green's comments mean Windows RT is dead. I've seen others claiming Larson-Green's remarks mean the Windows Desktop is dead. I've seen another group claiming she was conveying that the Windows Phone OS is dead.
Larson-Green didn't actually say any of those things. (You can read her exact words in this transcript.)
One core, many SKUs
So what did Larson-Green's remarks mean? In my view it's not exactly "One Windows," as my ZDNet collealgue Simon Bisson recently described it. In reality, it's a bit more nuanced. It's more like "One core and many SKUs" -- the lot of which Microsoft plans to call "Windows."
Read more at: Microsoft's Windows future: One core, many SKUs | ZDNet