[com2kid]

The Metro UI that debuted in Windows 8 was an abomination, it violated many of the design principles of the original Metro.

It was born out of Microsoft's fears that Tablets were going to take over everything, but at the same time Microsoft didn't want to invest 100% in a pure tablet experience, viewing the escape hatch to traditional Windows land as being a necessity. Win32 apps were going to be the advantage Windows tablets had over iPad!

So anyway that OS release was terrible.

To this day, Apple being the only company that was willing to go all in on tablets, is the only company with a successful tablet product and tablet software ecosystem.

[pjmlp]

No need for tablets when one can use a foldable laptop or 2-1 hybrids, which are quite successful in Europe, including the Surface models.

Now the Android tablets, that is another story altogether.

[com2kid]

In retrospect, sure. But back at the time, every tech news outlet was proclaiming the death of the desktop, and that iPads were going to take over the world.

So Microsoft panicked. Windows RT is the end result.

Eventually iPad sales dwindled, it turns out that if you make a really durable product and sell it to everyone, you do end up saturating a market!

Phone screens also got a lot larger, negating some of the need for tablets.