20 Windows 8 tablets in the pipeline, announces Intel

20 Intel -Windows 8 tablets on the way...

"Our customers have 20 designs in their labs based on Clover Trail," said Hermann Eul, President of Intel Mobile Communications Group, during an interview at the Computex trade show in Taipei. The company plans to reap benefits of the tablet-favoured Windows 8 operating system optimized for a touch experience. At the event, Asus has announced the 11.6-inch large screen based Tablet 810 that combines Intel's Clover Trail processor and the Windows 8 OS. Currently, Intel offers its Oak Trail-based tablets, adopted by HP and Dell. But Clover Trail is expected to offer an enhanced experience.

The thickness of the Clover Trail-based tablets is said to be less than 9mm and they weigh less than 680 grams. They will also provide more than nine hours of battery. And we thought, Intel has been putting all its efforts into the Ultrabook range. "The real tablet market starts with Windows 8," Eul said. “The Clover Trail tablets will be targeted at consumers and businesses, and offer long battery life.” These tablets will also support 3G/4G LTE capabilities and enhanced security and manageability features. Most tablets and smartphones these days come equipped with ARM chips and the Clover Trail tablets are said to compete with tablets that run on Windows RT OS, which is the OS version for ARM processors.

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Eul adds that the x86 architecture has its advantages over ARM, as Microsoft says that existing Windows applications will not work on Windows RT, and are backward compatible with x86 applications giving Clover Trail an edge over competing architectures. Windows has virtually grown up on x86 and they have a history of software and driver development.