Throughout the last week, I’ve been publishing blog posts highlighting new devices announced and showcased during Computex 2014 in Taipei from our partners. Our partners are helping us deliver a broad range of Windows devices with all kinds of different form factors and in new markets and more price points too. To help our partners, we’ve delivered new updates to Windows (Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update) as part of our new rapid release cadence. We have also added new hardware support to help our partners scale and new licensing such as $0 Windows for devices smaller than 9-inches in size. Many of the devices introduced this week at Computex are a result of all this work – which is awesome.
We had the honor of hosting a keynote at Computex again this year where Nick Parker, Corporate Vice President of the OEM Division, showcased nearly 40 new Windows and Windows Phone devices from our partners around the world. You can watch his keynote on-demand here. I also suggest reading his blog post here on the Official Microsoft Blog.
During his keynote, Nick gave a first sneak peek at Toshiba’s 7-inch tablet (pictured above) that will be available in the coming months at a value-driven price that is very competitive to any other 7-inch devices. You can read a little bit more on how we’re helping partners bring low-cost Windows devices to market here in a blog post I published a few weeks ago.
Nick also showed off the new HP Pro x2 612 2-in-1 that is designed for business customers and comes with a Wacom pen and dual batteries with the Power Keyboard.
Here is a summary of the announcements I’ve covered in blog posts this week.
HP: HP announced new 2-in-1 PCs that include the HP ENVY x360 and HP Pavilion x360 which can easily switch from a notebook to a stand, tent or tablet and the HP Split x2. Click here to read my blog post for details.
Dell: Dell announced two new 2-in-1 Inspiron PCs that feature a 360 degree rotation between laptop, easel, tent, and tablet modes – the Inspiron 11 3000 Series and Inspiron 13 7000 Series. They also announced the Inspiron 20 3000 Series, a new entry-level Inspiron All-in-One PC, and new monitors. Click here to read my blog post for details.
ASUS: ASUS announced a new Zenbook Ultrabook – the Zenbook NX500 – which has a 4k screen. They announced a new 2-in-1 – the Transformer Book Flip. And they announced the Portable AiO PT2001 – a portable All-in-One PC. Click here to read my blog post for details. ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) announced two new gaming desktop PCs, a new gaming laptop, and some gaming accessories too – see my blog post here for details.
There was one device from ASUS I missed earlier this week – the Transformer Book T300 Chi. The Transformer Book T300 Chi is a 2-in-1 with an amazingly thin 12.5-inch tablet (it’s only 7.3mm thick) that can detach from its keyboard.
In the above photo, Nick is holding the tablet and you can see how thin it really is. It’s powered by Intel’s Core M high performance and low power processor and is completely fanless. It also features LTE support and has a 2560×1440 WQHD IPS display.
New partners announced Windows Phones at Computex this week. Prestigio announced two Windows Phones – Prestigio MultiPhone 8500 DUO and Prestigio MultiPhone 8400 DUO. Yezz showed off their new Billy 4.7 Windows Phone. BLU teased their upcoming Windows Phones. On stage during Nick’s keynote, he also showed a phone from InFocus, which is the first of a family of affordable LTE phones in varying sizes. And prototypes were teased from BYD, Compal, Pegatron, Quanta and Wistron. Click here to read my blog post for details.
As you can see, a lot of really cool new Windows devices have been announced by our partners this week. We can’t wait for these devices to hit the market in the coming months!
We also had several partners announce new devices a few weeks prior to Computex that I also think is worth noting.
Toshiba: Toshiba announced new Encore 2 tablets – an 8-inch model and a 10.1-inch model. For details on those new tablets – see my blog post here.
Lenovo: Lenovo also announced new devices for businesses: ThinkPad 10 tablet and the ThinkStation P300. See my blog post here for details on those devices.
Acer: Acer announced a new 2-in-1 – the Aspire Switch 10 – as well as new Aspire E 14 and E 15 series laptops. They also announced new 23-inch All-in-Ones too. For details, see my blog post here.
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