Windows 8?

More reports about the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, from my colleague Brendan McKenna, LTN's news editor (while I'm hunkered down with the LTN magazine launch):

Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, described what some are calling "Windows 8" (O.K., everyone is calling it that but the CEO himself, who referred to it as "the next generation of Windows"), according to the Forward Thinking blog from PC Mag.com.

  Ballmer (right)  highlighted some of the planned features of Windows 8, saying that it "would support ARM-based chips from Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments; as well as traditional and SOC versions of chips from Intel and AMD" and will run "on ARM-based chips for the first time (as well as on x86 cores from Intel and ARM)."

However, despite murmurings from the press, it seems unlikely that Windows 8 will see the light of day in 2011. So for now, Ballmer also went out of his way to extol the virtues of  Microsoft's current operating system, Windows 7. He again repeated the oft-heard refrain that it was one the most successful launches in history, and continued by cheering that "20 million people are running the Internet Explorer 9 beta; 500 million people have now downloaded the latest version of Windows Live; and 20 million people have used the Office Live applications."

Ballmer also took some time to discuss future upgrades to the new Windows phone, and said it was faster than any other platform. But, he continued, "Microsoft's biggest challenge was showing the phone to more people ... 9 out of 10 Windows Phone customers say they would recommend the phone." The blog post goes into much more detail about where things stand for Microsoft at the beginning of 2011, but in summary: Windows 7 is a hit, Windows 8 may be on its way in 2012, and the new phone has visibility issues.

Ballmer's CES keynote video