AMD CEO accidentally reveals Windows 10's launch timing

Microsoft already said it intends to launch Windows 10 this summer, but now we have a better idea of exactly when that might happen, courtesy of AMD. During the company’s quarterly earnings call late last Thursday, AMD CEO Lisa Su let slip that Windows 10 would launch in July.

“With the Windows 10 launch at the end of July, we’re watching, sort of the impact of that on the back-to-school season, and expect that it might have a bit of a delay to the normal back-to-school season inventory build-up,” Su said in response to a question from an industry analyst. Oops.

Su may be mistaken and Microsoft’s plans are always subject to change. Nevertheless, as a large CPU and GPU maker, AMD is likely well-informed about Microsoft’s plans.

In fact, AMD may be counting on Windows 10’s release date to co-ordinate the release of its new flagship graphics card, the Radeon R9-300 series. AMD plans on discussing its new graphics cards before the end of June, Su said during the call, suggesting a release would come soon after.

Microsoft is famous for keeping its launch plans secret to the last possible moment even when the product is already public knowledge—as is the case with Windows 10.

The impact on you at home: If you’re wondering when you will get your hands on Microsoft’s upcoming operating system refresh then late July looks like a good bet. Windows 10 promises to be a great OS—one that, in many ways, will be what Windows 8 should have been.

Windows 10 will include a reborn Start menu featuring live modern UI tiles for traditional mouse-and-keyboard PCs. Windows 10 also has some nice features like Cortana integration and a new default browser currently dubbed Project Spartan. Assuming Su’s slip-up is correct, all of that Windows 10 goodness is about three months away from an official launch.

When will we know for sure?

Using Microsoft’s Windows 7 and 8 announcement schedules as a guide, Su may not have let the release date slip that early. In 2012, Microsoft announced the Windows 8 release date about three months ahead of time in mid-July of that year. The Windows 7 release date announcement came a month earlier, in June. Both launched in October. This suggests the company may make an official Windows 10 announcement in the near future if late July is the actual release window.

After the official release date is public knowledge, Microsoft will announce that its “release to manufacture” (RTM) build is ready. This is the build that ships to PC makers for pre-installation on new PCs. For both Windows 7 and Windows 8, the RTM announcement happened in August, about a month and a half before the actual release date. That means we could expect Windows 10 to hit RTM around early June.

Once that’s done, Microsoft will plan several promotional events leading up to the official release of Windows 10.

If Microsoft is close to announcing the Windows 10 release date, a good time to do it would be the company’s Build developer conference, which kicks off on April 29. PCWorld will be there. Stay tuned!

[via The Verge]