Acer has told Microsoft that is it not happy about Microsoft releasing hardware. Microsoft has been releasing hardware that competes with their hardware partners. Linxian Lang emailed Microsoft letting them know that he does not agree with this. Acer has pushed off the release of a tablet loaded with Windows RT because it is wary of competing with Microsoft.
Microsoft has not commented on these issues nor have mentioned any possible solutions to Acer’s concerns. If Microsoft starts producing hardware they could become similar to Apple computers in the sense that the software is designed specifically to interact with certain hardware. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this in the upcoming months.