Great interpretations of the recently published Microsoft by the numbers post in TechCrunch: Decoding Microsoft’s Fantastic Passive-Agressive Numbers Post.

To understand the real short-term perspective on Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 based clients for the cloud read my another news nugget: Intel SoC for Cloud Clients.

To make more sense of all that you could read/watch:

• Whether tablet PCs can become market segment is still uncertain, says Microsoft VP particularly the quote: “Microsoft will not offer new Windows versions to support non-Intel architectures that are targeting tablet PC development”
• Steve Guggenheimer: Computex Keynote when quite detailed explanation is needed on what Microsoft is going to do in this whole PC -> cloud transition, mainly from client perspective (although back-end / cloud server perspective has been given at the end as well). Here the kind of leading light quote for everybody is: “We have a tremendous opportunity to deliver the technology that at one point was only on the PC, and the content that at one point was only on the PC, across a much wider range of not PCs, but phones, TVs, and alternative devices.”
• Regarding the TV opportunity, as an example, there is a just 4 min long excerpt from the video record of the keynote worth to see: COMPUTEX 2010: Guggenheimer Keynote, Windows Embedded Standard.
• Regarding Microsoft updated, current way of thinking as platform software provider, there is also just a 6 min long excerpt from the video record of the keynote worth to see: COMPUTEX 2010: Guggenheimer Keynote, Platform Software. An essential quote from that: “… the truth of the matter is, technologies converge, but devices don’t. So, all of these devices start to share more and more technology over time, but we actually get more and more devices not less. At the same time we see more and more content going digital, right, we see more and more of the devices starting to move forward.”

So Microsoft’s strategy is to expand his main “Windows for PCs” platform as much as possible both downwards (the tablets/slates being the smallest, mobile devices) and upwards (TVs, larger interactive surfaces for the biggest, stand-alone devices) while continuing to stick to the Intel x86 platform hardware.

Note 1: Microsoft is continuing to support other hardware platforms (mainly ARM) with his, Windows Embedded CE derived, complementary offerings, mainly in the “true” mobility space:

as evidenced by the latest Microsoft Outlines Commitment to the Future of Enterprise Handheld Devices announcement, complementing the already announced Windows Phone 7 (Q4 2010 delivery)

while the next version of Windows Embedded CE, renamed to Windows Embedded Compact 7 (Q4 2010 delivery) will also continue to have the broadest possible appeal, with vision reformulated now as “… to create a device that seamlessly connects with PCs, media, online content, and data. You want to reinvent the way people interact with their devices”. So OEMs/ODMs could work on their own (building their own higher level software) as well, even for the tablet/slate area if they found the non-x86 hardware platform (mainly ARM) better for their offering but want to have Microsoft technologies as much as possible, at the same time.

Note 2: The above mobility strategy picture may confuse my statement about the more general role of Windows Embedded Compact 7. In order to prove the validity of that I am copying here the roadmap for the Windows Embedded Handheld.