HP unveiled it's operating system offering for phones, tablets, and..... PC's
So where is this going? Microsoft has been publicly chasing all things cloud for a while, so it may not come as a surprise that the folks who make the hardware may believe that the days for selling a device with an OS are limited, if Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync are all running as cloud based pay per use apps, or similar.

What does this mean to the consumer?

Perhaps a huge choice of devices which connect to cloud based apps. Whatever OS is running (or not running) on the device/tablet/whatever may not be of technical consequence anymore, but more of a personal preference.

What’s my take on this?

I see a huge deployed user base of PC’s, laptops and the usual enterprise real estate. If cloud apps/services/whatever else is going to take off to the point where things are projected, it’s because there are massive, tangible, no-brainer advantages to the consumer and corporate customer alike. Efficiencies of scale is only one of the arguments here and making the end user device one of many possible devices is both good and bad, especially from a support point of view.

As with many things, we’ll all find  as the swell of popularity rises enough to offer some direction as to where it’s going.

The end consumers are critical in my estimation of trying to ascertain where cloud is going, and I’d like to say that tablets are only part of the picture, since while they are convenient, they don’t offer a workhorse form factor that you can strap to an office desk!