ACPC - Is the Honeymoon over Already

In a recent interview with TechRadar - Windows GM Erin Chapple of MS kind of shrugged off the first wave of new Always Connected PCs (ACPCs) introduced in March by HP, Asus and Lenovo..  in her words "We're about choice in the ecosystem and working across our partners". 

 This was a pretty touted new platform when MS and Qualcomm first stood up to announce the partnership and the initial plans were for a 2017 release.   

 These devices did not fair well in their initial reviews and I like many didn't really promote their purchase.

 While presenting a potentially compelling combination of always on LTE and 20+ hour battery life - unfortunately they experienced pretty bad performance and confusing app support.  Some like the HP model were also pricey with a $999 starting price and top models over $1,200.

 And so while an improvement over the Windows RT devices of 5 years ago - this may be another experiment that will fade to black.

 During my initial take on these devices - I saw a couple areas for improvement. First was LTE 5 support - this new technology while originally targeted for 2020 deployment is already starting to see the light of day and second was a more powerful processor and 64 bit app support.

 Additionally MS to me missed the boat by not developing a more streamlined version of Windows.   Sure these devices came with Windows S out of the box - but almost everyone updated to Pro.  What was really needed was a light version of Windows that could run well on the SnapDragon 835.

 There are already rumors of a new wave of ACPCs running Intel chipsets including their LTE 5 - including the somewhat infamous Andromeda foldable tablet.   

 I also suspect that HP, Asus and Lenovo may do a second wave of these based on updated chips from Qualcomm - but I'm not sure it will help.  

 It actually kind of amazes me how the OEMs were willing to make the investment and crank up production on something they kind of knew during protoyping really wasn't going to work well.   

 I also have to wonder about MS's commitment to the effort.  Over the years MS has "partnered" with several chip manufactures in an effort to expand support for the Windows platform.  And in every case except 1 - AMD - MS always falls back to Intel.  

 And let's face it - many PCs today support LTE - I have it on both my trusty Venue 8 Pro tablet and HP Laptop.   

 So only time will tell - but I have the feeling that the new ACPC category may not survive past 2019...   At best it will just become a Windows feature and maybe some more OEMS will integrate LTE directly vs add-on M.2 cards.

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