Earlier today, it was reported that Intel sent invites to the press for an event on September 27 where they will highlight new devices from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and ZTE.  They’ll all feature Intel’s  “Clover Trail” Z2760 (PDF) power-efficient system-on-a-chip (SoC) processor and run Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 8, not Windows RT.  Windows RT is for devices featuring ARM chips.

The event will be hosted by Intel’s general manager of Application Processor Platforms in the Mobile Communications Groupt at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

It can be noted that Microsoft isn’t on the list of Intel partners who are going to showcase the new products.  This might be Microsoft’s way of saying “It’s your time to shine,” to their hardware partners.  But it can also be due to the fact that Microsoft is officially launching Windows 8 soon after, but not quite as soon as VentureBeat notes.  They write that the Microsoft event is 2 days before Intel’s, when it’s in fact a month after, on October 25, to be exact.  And general availability of Windows 8 will be on October 26.

However, what’s interesting here is, Dell and HP, two ailing PC-making companies, made it to the list.  Could Windows 8 be the answer to their hurting business?  Not really sure about that, since they have a lot of competitors, particularly in the mobile space where some rivals have been established for years.  But there’s no harm in trying, right?

HP’s plan

HP CEO MEg Whitman recently unveiled the company’s freshened plan on getting back on the saddle: they’re bringing back smartphones to their portfolio.  In an interview with Fox, Whitman stated that ultimately HP would have to offer smartphones, since there will be countries wherein the smartphone will be the primary computing device, and there’s a huge chance that some people will never get to have a tablet, a PC or laptop.  But some say that it’s way too late for HP to get back in the game especially with the fact that nothing good happened with Palm after they’ve purchased it – it was shut down, so it’s highly unlikely investors would be happy with their new smartphone plan.

Dell’s approach

As for Dell, what they aim to penetrate with their Windows 8 devices is the business side of the market.  There are a lot of manufacturers who claim that their tablets are meant to be used for business, but they still feel more like a consumer device.

They’ve already addressed this issue with the recently unveiled Latitude 10 –  a tablet which they claim literally means business.  The Latitude 10 supports Dell’s DDPE, or Dell Data Protection for Enterprises, which provides enterprise IT policy-based encryption and their storage encryption complies with FIPS or the U.S. Federal Information Processing Standards (140-2) certifications.  Plus it supports fingerprint readers and smart card readers for 2-factor authentication and additional security.

A second chance for mobile

Apple winning a major patent case against Samsung was no small matter.  The win clearly gives Apple the edge over competitors and the bullet to go after other Android OEMs.  We’ve mentioned in a previous post that this could bode well for other mobile players such as Nokia, since one of their Lumia phones was used by Apple as an example during the trial that companies can make innovative devices without blatantly copying from competitors.

Microsoft would benefit from this too, since Apple is clearly targeting Google’s Android platform.  So there’s a huge chance OEMs would come knocking on their door to use Windows Phone 8, Windows 8 or Windows RT on their mobile devices.