The reason so many commentators are willing to talk up the chances of Windows 8 tablets is because, quite smartly, they'll exist inside the Windows ecosystem, rather as a walled in offshoot.

As such, developers making a move on the tablet market with Microsoft come 2012 will also be able to sell to the millions of consumers who have Windows 8 installed on their PCs.

It should be of little surprise, then, that studios are snapping up the Windows 8 developer preview at a pace, according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Winning with Windows

Just hours after it was released, Ballmer took to the stage at BUILD 2011 in Anaheim, California to proclaim 500,000 copies of the preview had already been downloaded.

It's a sign, he claimed, that developers are on board with Microsoft's retooling of the most popular OS on the planet.

"We still have a long way to go with Windows 8," he said.

"It's not about doing something else. It's about broadly re-imagining Windows."

Ballmer said Windows 7 will ship on 350 million PCs in 2011. That's a monentum Microsoft will look to maintain with its successor, allowing developers to tap into a ecosystem far larger than any of those currently on tablets.

"There is no phone, there is nothing on the tablet, there is no operating system on the planet that will ship 350 million units of anything other than Windows," he concluded.

"To me this all adds up to an unprecedented time of opportunity for developers."

[source: AllThingsD]