Windows 8 May Bridge PC-Tablet DivideWindows 8 May Bridge PC-Tablet Divide

A Microsoft official said Thursday that applications built for Windows 8 will run on both the tablet and PC versions of the forthcoming operating system, regardless of underlying hardware. If the pledge holds up when a final version of the OS ships, it could give Microsoft an edge over competing platforms that force users to choose between devices that can run snappy tablet apps or PCs capable of running business programs like Office and Excel.

Windows 8-powered systems will run "the same app, completely cross-platform, based on the Windows 8 development platform," said Michael Angiulo, a corporate VP in Microsoft's Windows group, during a demonstration of the new technology at the Computex computer exhibition in Taiwan.

Angiulo demoed a version of Microsoft Word running on a generic Windows 8-powered tablet powered by Nvidia's forthcoming quad core Kal-El chip as well as a number of other apps that appeared to port seamlessly from one device to the next.

"From day one we started engineering these systems with a much closer integration of hardware and software than ever," said Angiulo, who called Windows 8 "a reimagining" of the OS, which has been on the market in various editions for more than 25 years.

Windows 8 borrows heavily from Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 interface. Its Start menu, for instance, uses Windows Phone's Live Tiles. The tiles, which can be customized by the user, feed real-time data from social networks, e-mail accounts, messaging systems and other services directly to the home screen. The tiles can also be expanded to fill the whole screen to create a true tablet look.

If Microsoft can deliver true cross-platform compatibility on Windows 8, it stands to gain a significant share of the still nascent corporate market for tablets.

While consumers may be satisfied with tablets, such as Apple's iPad or Google Android-powered devices, that are geared toward content viewing and communicating, businesses are likely to truly embrace slates only if they can give workers access to the full range of productivity apps and tools they have on their desktops. "The bet is that the tablet isn't a distinct third device, but rather a different PC form factor," said Wells Fargo analyst Jason Maynard, in a research note. "There are clear use cases for rich Office apps, and iOS/Android tablets don't completely fit the bill."

There's still a hitch, however. Only new apps that have been built specifically for Windows 8's HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS programming environment will be able to jump between platforms. Apps developed for older versions of Windows, even those as recent as Vista and Windows 7, are only likely to run on Windows 8 PCs or laptops powered by Intel or AMD x86 processors and not on ARM-based tablets.

That means it's likely to be at least a couple of years before Windows 8 PCs and tablets attain a significant presence in the enterprise market, as corporations tend to be conservative when it comes to updating their applications for new platforms. Microsoft has not provided a definitive ship date for Windows 8, but industry speculation has it pegged at somewhere between the 2011 holiday shopping season and the first half of 2012.