Windows 8 to come in 2012: Microsoft

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer says the next version of the company's operating system – Windows 8 - will be available in 2012.

At the Microsoft Developer Forum in Tokyo yesterday, Ballmer said the software giant was working hard on  Windows 8, which would also be available for tablet computers, according to a report in the PC Magazine.

Ballmer has yet not yet commented on rumours regarding the features of the new OS but dropped hints that there would be a day in the future when it would be difficult to ''distinguish a phone from a slate, from a PC.

"You literally will have displays that become paper thin and very easy to fold out form your phone," he said. "And at the same time, you're going to get more and more PC-like capabilities in smaller form factor devices."

There has been much buzz about Windows 8 on the internet in recent months, but Microsoft has yet to confirm any particular features it will add to the OS. Though he did not elaborate on what Widows 8 would offer users, he outlined several areas which Microsoft is committed to investing.

One of these is the natural user interface, or "the notion that we really want to speak, wave and gesture, touch and mark on our computing devices," Ballmer said. Microsoft would like to make your device recognise users and their actions, like Kinect does for gaming (and Netflix and Hulu queues).

To this end Microsoft also has ideas regarding natural language. "Today on a PC, it's file open, blah, blah, blah, respond, reply, forward. I can't just say to my device, get me ready for my trip to Tokyo," Ballmer said. " We ought to make it so that the search engines, and the user interface of the device can take actions on our behalf."
 
Ballmer also touched on the company's use of HTML and JavaScript; "we have to recognize that more and more of the world's talent will know these techniques," he said.
 
And, not the least there is the cloud. "Skype is just another representation of what we think is the importance of enabling a broad range of scenarios in the cloud," he said of Microsoft's recent acquisition.

Ballmer also spoke about Windows Phone and the expected 500 new features that the next upgrade would bring. The company is expected to unveil more details about that upgrade, codenamed Mango, at a press event in New York tomorrow which would be webcast live on Microsoft's web site at 10 am Eastern time.