Microsoft: Keep Making Hardware

he told the Times. The idea being that Microsoft will lead the way to prove a beautiful tablet can be made on Windows 8--but that ultimately, it will cede to partners their core competency of hardware production, and return to its own: software.

But Microsoft may do best by sticking to this new path of making its own hardware. Its recent forays into hardware have produced some of Microsoft’s most innovative products. And its recent investments hint at an interest in a hardware-centric future. Tightly yoking hardware and software has obviously been a great success for Apple’s iOS devices; integration of hardware and software likewise seems to be a motivation for the Google-Motorola partnership (though it also was an I.P. play--Motorola has a huge patent portfolio).

Microsoft Xbox 360 is one of the great pieces of hardware extant; it (and its successor) stands to transform our living room. And with Microsoft’s recent investment in Barnes and Noble’s Nook, it stands to reason that Microsoft might be interested in getting into the e-reader business, where it could be a worthy competitor to Amazon. In early May, the Times’s Nick Wingfield called that an investment that offered

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