Update: Steve Ballmer Retracts on his Windows 8 Claims

UPDATE: Recent news updates show that Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer has now gone back on his words. Ballmer, had earlier made an announcement stating that Windows 8 will be launched next year at the Microsoft Developer Forum, Tokyo. He has now retracted from his announcement. Ballmer, although managed to stay mum on the flakiness of his announcement, it was the spokesperson of the company who passed this as an instance of Ballmer's 'cluelessness' on the product development.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has confirmed that the next Windows operating system – Windows 8 will be launched in 2012. This announcement was made at Microsoft Developer Forum in Tokyo with Ballmer saying that they were obviously hard at work on the next version of Windows. Speaking at the forum, Ballmer said that as they look forward to the next generation of Windows systems, which will come out next year there will be a lot more coming.

He went on to say that as we progress through the year, one ought to expect to hear a lot about Windows 8 with there being Windows 8 slates, tablets, PCs and a variety of different form factors. The Microsoft chief did not give out a lot of information on the user experience of the upcoming version but he did say that the notion that we really want to speak, wave and gesture, touch and mark on our computing devices. He goes on to say that they ought to make PCs so that the search engines and the user interface of the device can take actions on user’s behalf.

Ballmer states that some more work has to be done by Microsoft where tablets are concerned. He says that there will be a day in the future where it will be hard to distinguish a phone from a slate, from a PC.

Source: Tech Herald,PC Magazine