Wintel launches new era

Wintel (Microsoft + Intel) Alliance has monopolized the desktop for more than 20 years, relying on Intel's Moore's Law and the upgrading of Microsoft's Windows system, the two sides continue to draw huge profits by jointly dominating the downstream PC manufacturers, occupying 80% -90% of the desktop market share. Once upon a time, the Wintel Alliance was indestructible and invincible, but today's two big IT giants are disguised, looking for new things: Intel and Google eyebrows, and Microsoft took the latest Windows system to send to other partners.

In mid-September, Microsoft officially released the Windows 8 operating system and announced that it has reached a strategic cooperation with ARM. It will adopt the ARM architecture in the next-generation operating system product Windows 8, and Windows is no longer just a PC operating system. It can be used in PCs, Tablets, smart phones and other terminals.

Intel's actions are not slower than Microsoft. At IDF 2011, Intel CEO Otellini and Andy Rubin, head of Google's Android system, announced that Intel has reached a strategic cooperation with Google, and the Android system will support Intel's existing X86 chip architecture.

This means that in the future, ARM-based mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones will be able to see Windows 8 in addition to Google Android and Apple iOS. Similarly, the future of computer products using the X86 chip architecture will no longer use the Windows operating system, Android will appear.

The end of the Wintel era shows that a revolution in the IT world has begun. The two giants are highly consistent in their actions and it is precisely because of the times that they are looking for new partners today.

Tablet PCs and smart phones are hitting the PC market with unprecedented power. Although the financial reports of Intel and Microsoft are still bright, people who are interested can find that the PC market is beginning to decline. As of the end of June this year, in the fourth quarter of Microsoft's fiscal year 2011, revenue from the "Windows" business unit providing operating systems fell by 1% year-on-year, which was the third consecutive quarter of operating revenue for the division. Intel’s latest financial report also showed that the company’s PC customer group’s operating profit was US$3.284 billion, down from US$3.333 billion in the same period last year.

The pinnacle of the PC era has become a thing of the past, and the future will be a new IT era in which the boundaries of the notebook, tablet, and mobile phone markets are increasingly blurred. For this reason, the Wintel Alliance quietly disintegrated. It is not just Intel and Microsoft that are aware of this.

Intel has already begun to create "super notebooks" (in a sense, it is a powerful tablet with a keyboard). The PC manufacturer ASUS chairman Shi Chongyi made it clear that no processor or system vendor will be able to dominate the PC, tablet PC or mobile phone market as before Wintel.

Wu Ren, vice president of Renren, believes that the future of tablet PCs + portable keyboards will become the mainstream, rather than today's people need to go back to work on their laptops, and then pass an iPad to pass the time.

The IT community will usher in an era of contending. Quoting the crowd, consumers will have more choices, and IT vendors will also have new opportunities for competition.