Will Windows 8 on ARM be an OEM-only product?

All the recent back and forth over Microsoft disallowing the installation of other operating systems on Windows 8 ARM tablets seems to me to be obscuring a bigger and more interesting question: Will Windows 8 on ARM be an OEM-only product?

In other words, unlike the situation with Windows 8 for Intel — where testers and users can download Windows 8 bits and install them on tablets and PCs of their choice — will Windows 8 on ARM be locked to specific hardware?

I know some Microsoft watchers are assuming this will be the case, but Microsoft has not said anything on this officially. I re-asked today just to be sure, and was told by a spokesperson: “All we’ve said is the ARM based partners we’re working with – we haven’t yet talked about the go to market plans.”

(Some may recall an Intel exec blabbed a while back and said that those announced ARM partners — Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments — were each building their own custom version of Windows for their processors and that these various versions wouldn’t be compatible with one another. Microsoft execs denied that Intel’s portrayal of the situation was accurate but never said specifically why it was wrong.)

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Tags: analysis | business | rumor