ASUS giving up on Windows RT tablets

ASUS will no longer be supporting the Windows RT platform, the company has confirmed, following lacklustre interest in the “lite” version of the Microsoft operating system.

“It’s not only our opinion, the industry sentiment is also that Windows RT has not been successful,” said ASUS CEO Jerry Shen, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

The company will now focus on Intel-based tablets running the full Windows 8 operating system, alongside their other laptop, desktop and Android tablet interests.

ASUS’s diminished interest in Windows RT is a sentiment shared by Nvidia, who also revealed they too had been burned by their involvement with the platform.

Microsoft’s own heavily-marketed Windows Surface RT tablet also failed to set the world alight, and was soon superseded by the Surface Pro, running the full-fat version of Windows 8. Poor Surface RT sales led to the Redmond company having to write-down $900m for the Surface tablets in its latest earnings report, with sales only adding to $853m.

Windows RT was designed as a mobile-focussed OS for tablet devices, capable of running on low-power ARM-based systems. However, poor software compatibility and a lack of a traditional Windows desktop environment turned off would-be consumers.