Microsoft will need the support of these ISVs to make the ARM version of Windows a success, warned Dan Olds, principal analyst of the Gabriel Consulting Group.

"It's not just Microsoft moving to ARM, but Microsoft also must get all the other ISVs [to follow suit] in order to have the ecosystem its wants," Olds said. "It has to have apps from everyone else."

On Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that the next, as-yet unnamed, version of Windows for the ARM chip architecture.

Thanks to its low power consumption, the ARM architecture is widely used for battery-driven portable devices. The market for such tablet devices has been exploding, driven by sales of Apple's iPad. Other manufacturers are finalizing or have just released tablets running on Google's Android operating system. Research firm Gartner has estimated that 54.8 million [m] tablets will be purchased in 2011. Yet Microsoft has been noticeably absent from this market.

The next version of Windows, due in 2012, will attempt to rectify this situation.