Putting Windows onto a consumer tablet is essential to rival the iPad and stay relevant, say the analysts at Forrester.

Microsoft needs an answer to Apple's iPad and that should be some sort of Windows-based consumer tablet.

At least that is the position that analysis firm Forrester takes in a new report, which argues that tablets are "the next important computing form."

"To keep its products front and center, Microsoft needs a partner to produce a successful Windows tablet that competes with the Apple iPad," analysts JP Gownder and Sarah Rotman Epps said in a report released on Thursday. "At stake is nothing less than the future of
the operating system."

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