These things take time, for sure, but all of a sudden, Samsung really seems to like Microsoft.
It can’t be happy days in at the headquarters of Samsung Electronics in Seoul after that bruising loss to Apple in court. But the company is shaking things off and getting awfully cozy with Microsoft, it would seem.
At the IFA show in Berlin, the company showed off a bigger, faster Note tablet, a new Galaxy Camera, and smartphones and tablets running Windows 8. The new ATIV family of smartphones looks as impressive on paper as the Galaxy S III, which may or may not be banned from sale, thanks to the court loss to Apple.
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The ATIV family includes the ATIV S smartphone, the ARM-based ATIV Tab tablet, and the Intel-based ATIV Smart PC and Smart PC Pro. The ATIV S smartphone runs Windows Phone 8 and should ship later this year.
If you thought the Lumia was nice, check out the specs on the ATIV S: a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, NFC and MicroSD, in a package just 8.7 millimeters thick.
The ARM-based ATIV Tab has 10.1-inch screen, weighs 570 grams and is 8.9 millimeters thick, making it thinner and lighter than the new iPad. It comes with a detachable keyboard and USB and HDMI ports. The company also introduced the Atom-based ATIV Smart PC and the ATIV Smart PC Pro, which runs an Intel Core i5 processor and has an 11.6-inch screen.
The company also announced two slate PCs: the Series 5 and Series 7 Slate PCs. These new laptops can easily transform from a traditional clamshell notebook to a slate device, and will come with Windows 8.
These come just days after Samsung announced three new PCs that will come with Windows 8 as well. These desktops will range in price from $749 to $1,699 depending on the configuration. At the press conference to announce the laptops, Samsung made a surprising move, one that will have interesting fallout.
Samsung built its own optional Start button into its Windows 8 desktops that can be used to pull up a menu of applications. This will make Samsung desktops and presumably laptops the only Windows 8 PCs with such a feature.
It’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out. Microsoft went to the trouble of yanking the Start menu code out of Windows 8 to force people to adapt and migrate to the Artist Formerly Known as Metro. If they let Samsung get away with this, it would be an unprecedented move by Microsoft: allowing an OEM to basically alter the operation of its OS. And it might also give Dell, HP and Lenovo ideas.
The Apple suit has more or less driven Samsung into Microsoft’s arms, so I’m surprised Samsung would go into business for itself by making an OS mod. I can’t wait to see how this ends.
