is caused by waiting for monkey boy to tell'em they can't use it (if they want remain in MS good books).

maybe

Getting suspicious that a certain company from Redmond are leaning on manufacturers to delay release until they have an ARM port ?

Microsoft does have an ARM port -- of CE (Windows Mobile). Smartphones (and a lot of "dumb" phones) all run ARM. It's just seriously showing it's age. I'm honestly very surprised they didn't at least buy out one of the makers of WinMo skins so they could release a more modern-looking Windows Mobile 6.5 then they did.

NT kernel (Win 7 or whatever) on ARM? That'll be a real tricky port. And the results might not be so good -- x86 emulation would allow it to run a lot more apps but be very heavy (recall, the ARM is like 600mhz-1ghz as installed in most devices now, with a target of maybe 1.5-2ghz in the next year or 2). Otherwise if it only supports native ARM apps, there'll be very few applications available. Windows on ARM will have to stand on it's own merits, there will be minimal momentum from the already existing program base.

To be honest, Microsoft tends to hype up ANY project they are working on. And I've not heard a peep of a ARM port from anyone. I honestly don't think they are seriously working on this. They COULD be leaning on Asus though, but if they are I don't think it'd be to delay ARM-based systems -- it'd be to not produce them at all.

Microsoft doesn't have to "lean on anyone". XP took over the netbook "ecosystem" because customers wanted XP.

Us nerds/geeks/technically-adept-consumers just aren't a big enough niche to match the demand from ordinary users.