Today Microsoft and ARM announced that they have signed a licensing agreement for the ARM processor architecture. While there have been no details from Microsoft or ARM on what the agreement covers there is of course plenty of speculation. One thought is that the full version of Windows could be ported to ARM which would enable Windows to run on the low power ARM chips for mobile devices. But Mary-Jo Foley has a suggestion that it would be for Windows Phone 7 to run on slates. So far slates have been showing running Windows Embedded Compact but OEMS have to build there own user interface for that platform (and create app stores etc) so there are doubts to how well that would work and given how well the Zune/Windows Phone UI could work on a tablet I think a Windows Phone 7 powered slate would be really good idea.

Microsoft have to do something that is seen to be competing with Apple’s iPad and the Android slates that will be coming out soon, I recently got an iPad to try and really like it but I would much rather have a Windows Phone powered device