While it might not smell like roses for Microsoft's tablet strategy, the company is far from shut out and seems poised to take the reigns from Android and obliterate Apple on the side for kicks, you know, for a second time in company history.  At this point, you may think I sound like another pro-Microsoft bobble head, but I guarantee you that my recent love for Microsoft is only related to the massive amounts of awesome that have been coming out of Redmond, albeit at a trickle.

Windows RT

Let's start here.  Windows RT isn't dead, but it might as well be.  It's not that Windows sucked on ARM, it's that ARM sucked in the 1980s and still sucks today.  That's sort of why the architecture practically died out decades ago only to be brought back from the dead with the need for low-energy and low-performance chips in the first generations of smartphones.  Sure, Microsoft touts that they'll continue to support the failed experience known as Windows RT, but you'd say that too if you were trying to push inventory out the door. Microsoft doesn't need Windows RT, and this alone signals a minor victory for Redmond.  They can continue to focus on the x86 platform that is near and dear to their hearts.

Windows 8.1

Oh, boo hoo.  So, consumers and enterprises didn't jump for joy when it came to Windows 8.  So what? They did at least jump.  Within the first year on the market, Windows 8 topped the market share for Windows Vista. Furthermore, it surpassed all versions of OSX combined.  Despite this success, vocal tech journalists imaginatively created negative sentiment and backlash against everything from the Start button to the default touch interface.  

As a aside let me say that if you're one of those people who says "I don't like Windows 8 because they took away the Start button!" then you're a blooming idiot.  The Start button didn't disappear, it was moved... try brushing up on your computer skills from time to time.  It's this type of lazy bitching that caused Microsoft to ugly-up Windows 8.1 with four Start buttons.  No, really, go count them... four god damned Start buttons.

Partnerships

What Microsoft has that Apple doesn't are partnerships.  Healthy, strong, and strategic partnerships.  Apple can't stop themselves from suing their arguably most important supplier just because of some fair-market competition.  Microsoft has partnerships with virtually everybody to some degree.  Those relationships may be strained, but they're not dysfunctional.  Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo... a lot of tablet manufacturers want Windows to succeed.  I won't go back and analogize this to the early PC wars, but it's worth independently thinking about.

Sure, those same Windows tablet manufacturers I just listed also make Android devices, but Android serves the lower portion of the overall computing market.  Remember, I said "overall" market here, not just mobile... that distinction matters in the case of bringing Windows fully to mobile.  Sure, we're seeing Android on more and more devices beyond phones and tablets, but not to a level that signals a coup d'état, more like a catchy show-off trend among übernerds.  New powerful mobile chips from Intel--which exclusively run Android and Windows--will reinforce this high-low split between Microsoft Windows and Google's Android, respectively.

Taking a Bite Out of Apple?

Android owns tablet market share, not Apple.  Microsoft is encroaching on Android's high-end turf, wrangling the Microsoft-loyal business crowd, and threatening Apple on every level from price to performance.  The simple question becomes, "Is there room for Apple in the new tablet space?"  Between Android taking the low-to-mid market, and Windows taking the mid-to-performance market, it looks as if the answer might just be "no" pretty soon.  Especially since Apple is running at about the same $200 premium over both Android and Windows tablets.

And finally, let's be honest with one another... its increasingly difficult to even attempt to compare Apple's relatively low-function iOS mobile operating system with the fully functional power-house that is created by installing full-blown Windows on a tablet.  Apple isn't out of the game yet.  Not by a long shot.  OSX seems to slowly be adopting Windows 8 style features repackaged in brushed-steel styling in some sort of futile attempt to look original and unique as well as ready for touch (ah-hem, Launch Pad and full screen apps, anybody?).   But between Apple, Google, and Microsoft, it is Apple that should be viewed as being in the roughest of seas.  

If you remove all of the emotion from technology and focus just on the products, you know that somewhere deep inside your logical brain, this assessment rings as perfectly true at the present time.  If not, you'll probably resort to some pretty nasty, and emotionally-fueled, remarks below in the comments section.  Just don't make me wince too much.