In a Q&A held this week during the UBS Global Technology Summit, Julie Larson-Green, the Executive Vice President, Devices and Studios hinted that one of the operating systems out of Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1 and Windows Phone 8 may be dropped or merged with other and there may exist only two Windows operating systems in future.
We have the Windows Phone OS. We have Windows RT and we have full Windows. We’re not going to have three. We do think there’s a world where there is a more mobile operating system that doesn’t have the risks to battery life, or the risks to security. But, it also comes at the cost of flexibility. So we believe in that vision and that direction and we’re continuing down that path.
There have been enough rumors and insider information which bet on the merger of Windows Phone and Windows RT going forward and some claim that WinRT may be dropped entirely with Windows Phone getting the ability to support displays up to 10 inch. Now, this admission by Julie Larson-Green may be the first official confirmation of this actually happening in future.
Apart from this, Julie has also talked about why MS planned to acquire Nokia’s Device and Services division, when they already had good close partnership with them.
JULIE LARSON-GREEN: Right. It’s actually about removing the seams in the experience. So the Nokia camera is amazing, but it sits on top of the operating system. So it doesn’t integrate into in the experience the way you expect. You have multiple camera apps. You have multiple storage places. You have multiple ways to upload. And so being able to remove those seams and talk more freely about the future direction of what the operating system and what they’re thinking to bring that into the experience.
They just announced today the Dragon Time app, which is a kid’s game. It’s designed to sit back with your phone or your tablet and kids play a game. The game takes advantage of all the geospatial information that Nokia has and will give you in the game real-time weather, traffic routing, and things like that to make the game more interesting. So if it’s raining outside, it shows that it’s raining in the game. If there’s a traffic jam in trying to get to the capital because there’s a traffic jam and mom’s driving through traffic, it will show you that in the game.
And so those are things that are above the operating system today, and thing that we can bring down into the operating system and make available to all apps, not just apps on top of Nokia. So there’s that.
And a big part of it also as well is just an amazing quality of the engineering team that they have there, the capabilities that they bring to bear that we can put across all of our devices, things like camera technology, audio technology, imaging technology, just different things that they have as well as supply chain, inventory management, and all the parts that they do so well. Even things like,… I’ve had questions about the music experience. Nokia has a music experience, and we have a music experience. It turns out we’re not in all the same countries. It really helps us bring a more worldwide focus to the things that we’re doing with the distribution channels they have, and just the way that they think about delivering their products.
