Rumors Suggest Windows 8 Could Ship Next Year
Windows 9 Planned for 2014
Here's big news, if it proves to be true: Microsoft's next major operating system, Windows 8, might just be ready for us next summer. According to a new rumor, the Redmond-based firm is planning a commercial release for Windows 8 in August 2012, less than two years after it shipped the still very popular Windows 7.
The rumor comes to us from MS Nerd, a not-particularly-well-known tech blog. MS Nerd points to a leaked roadmap which reportedly shows a number of planned Microsoft release dates for the next three years.
The first big release worth mentioning? A Windows 8 beta for us to play around with in time for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2012. The roadmap then shows a Release Candidate of the operating system becoming available around June, with the full, commercial release hitting store shelves in August.
But it's not just Windows 8 that we can look forward to next year, if the leaked roadmap is to be believed. We will also get a closer look at Microsoft's highly-rumored and hotly-anticipated online application store, WinStore, in beta form sometime early in the year as well. Then there are a number of developer tools for Kinect, Microsoft's popular hands-free Xbox 360 peripheral, and the Windows Phone mobile platform.
Looking even further down the highway, the leaked roadmap shows a Windows 9 developer preview in time for the early fall BUILD conference in 2013, followed by a beta in the winter (Consumer Electronics Show 2014), a Release Candidate in the summer, and then a full commercial release around November 2014.
Is any of this likely to occur? Well, it's worth noting that, as usual, Microsoft is refusing to comment on this wild rumor. Beyond that, some common sense calls a few of these roadmap predictions into question. The biggest concern I have is that, if the roadmap is to be believed, Microsoft would essentially be phasing out its very popular Windows 7 operating system before many home and business users make the switch from Windows Vista and Windows XP.
For this reason, I remain highly sceptical of this still unconfirmed new rumor.
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