"Not sure that MS could be accused of being a dominant player in the ARM space. Linux (via Android) has pretty much had that it itself for some time and the tablets available today are pretty much locked bootloaders and hard/impossible to put your preferred flavour of Linux on (assuming you can find drivers etc) This is a new space, so anything MS (or Apple or an Android OEM) do is new territory. Maybe I'm missing the argument here but I don't see this as being a problem... if an OEM choose to build a machine that will ship with Win8 they can - if demand exists - just as easily ship the same SKU with one small difference... no lockdown... for Linux... but in order to do that there has to be the market demand for it (and expecting MS to provide a "free ride" is disingeneous and unless you hold Apple and Motorola etc to the same standard unfair). If I buy a phone today - I expect to run the OS I bought it with because in many cases the OS developer and the OEM worked hand-in-hand to get..." - offbeatmammal