Microsoft gave their last CES keynote tonight. We have some highlights for you. Read on for details!
Steve Balmer and Ryan Seacrest appeared onstage at CES to bring us the last Microsoft CESs keynote; this will be their last year appearing at the show. Anyway, we have some highlights of the keynote for you.
Windows Phone 7
They talked about the new Nokia Lumia 900 phone for AT&T that we told you about here, and also mentioned a new HTC Titan II 4G LTE handset for AT&T. We’ll bring you some details on that handset shortly. The Windows Phone 7 theme is Putting People First and they demoed some applications designed to do just that.
Windows PC
Microsoft discussed how Windows has changed over time to adapt to new market requirements, and announced that there were more than 1.3 billion Windows PC’s in use across the globe.
Windows 8 was a major theme, with demos of Windows 8 on x86 and ARM hardware. The ARM tablet demonstrated was a Tegra 3 from NVidia, and Microsoft also announced that ARM solutions from other vendors, such as Texas Instruments, would be supported. Windows 8 will be available in early February for public beta testing.
The Windows Store for apps was also demonstrated, and will be available in February. HTML5-based apps were highlighted, and Microsoft promised that the store would be available in over 200 countries. Also, they promised that businesses could use the Windows Store to deploy enterprise applications across Windows 8 machines, a very useful deployment tool.
Ultrabook PC’s
Microsoft announced that HP and Samsung had new Ultrabooks coming: the HP Envy 14 Spectre and the Samsung Series 9 2nd Generation. The HP will feature Beats Audio and glass construction and the Samsung continues to be small, thin and light, and now also comes in a 15” model. Andrew covered the Spectre here and the second generation Series 9 here.
Xbox
Xbox is getting a new content partner in NewsCorp. In addition, a new two-way interactive TV service was demonstrated with a Sesame Street episode in which the viewer can impact the episode. Very cool stuff! Expect more of these interactive TV experiences in 2012, with Kinect.
Kinect for Windows
Kinect for Windows is coming in February and the hardware is available for preorder at Amazon here now. Microsoft is working with over 200 companies, including American Express, United Health and Toyota to bring Kinect experiences to Windows 8. I really look forward to seeing what Microsoft and its partners manage to come up with here!
Those were the main highlights. It is clear that Windows 8 and Metro are the focus of Microsoft’s 2012. It should be an interesting year!
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