Microsoft's display, at Computex 2011, of the touch controls of Windows 8 using the company's technologies from Windows Phone 7's Metro UI. Digitimes Research believes Microsoft using such technology and concepts to develop Windows 8 will have four major factors that could affect the mobile device industry.

First, Microsoft will attack from the PC industry into the mobile device industry which should allow the company to grab a certain market share in the mobile device industry. Digitimes Research pointed out that Windows 8 is not only the counter measure against the advance of Android and iOS, it also starts up the competition between PC and smartphone platforms.

The launch schedule of Windows 8-based tablet PCs will be the second major factor. Although tablet PCs with x86-based Windows 8 are expected to appear in the third quarter of 2012, tablet PCs with ARM-based Windows 8 are unlikely to appear until the first quarter of 2013 which could lead Microsoft's partners to continue to focus on cooperating with Microsoft's competitors.

The third is that whether Windows 8's control user interface can smoothly be used on PCs and tablet PCs. Digitimes Research pointed out that the x86-based Windows 8 is unlikely to have any great changes, while PC applications will still mainly use mouse and keyboard as the major control method, leaving tablet PCs to adopt touch controls.

The fourth is that Windows Phone may also have a chance of using Windows 8 for its operating system. Since Windows Phone 7's application framework is designed using XNA and Silverlight, which are supported by Microsoft and developed through VisualStudio as the development kit, the same as Windows 8, this means the company will save a lot of work transferring Windows 8 with a brand new UI Framework to smartphone applications.

Although Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows CE, judging from Microsoft's integration of Windows Phone 7 touch control technologies and application development support into Windows 8, the company's next move should be to unify its platforms, meaning that the future operating system for Windows Phone will be designed directly from the basic structure of Windows 8.