I'm 99% certain this is Microsoft trying to ensure that OEMs don't cheapen the Windows 8 brand by reusing hardware designs across their Android and Windows 8 ta

I'm 99% certain this is Microsoft trying to ensure that OEMs don't cheapen the Windows 8 brand by reusing hardware designs across their Android and Windows 8 tablets. Not all consumers understand the difference between software and hardware, and if they see the same tablet in a Windows 8 version and a cheaper Android version, a lot of them will chose the Android version without a second thought. Since the chipsets lack Linux/Android support entirely, reusing the other parts of a tablet design will not be quite as easy as writing a different image to a flash chip. I'm no embedded systems engineer, but I imagine having to completely replace the chipset architecture (let alone the chipset itself) would be a significant deterrent to entirely reusing a Windows 8 tablet's design for an Android one. Even if Microsoft chose to coerce OEMs into pricing their Android and Windows 8 offerings identically (or, on a cold day in hell, temporarily waive the Windows 8 license fee), competing for consumers with (arguably) superior software alone against an enormous incumbent with an established platform is a fight Microsoft has been on the other side of far too many times to want to start out of the gate. Alternatively, perhaps Microsoft is subsidizing their OEM tablets, and they don't want savvy customers to buy subsidized Windows 8 tablets and flash their Android "ROMs" of choice onto them. This sucks for regular Linux users who might like to see either of these chipsets in a new generation of netbooks, but I imagine we aren't too important to AMD and Intel's bottom lines at the moment.