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Microsoft, Intel to cede tablet market to Apple?
Sunday, December 27, 2009 5:51 PM
If the Apple tablet emerges as expected, this will be another big device market, following media players and smartphones, that the PC industry cedes to Apple.
The writing is already on the wall already for Microsoft and smartphones, as spelled out in a previous post and as documented in shrinking market share numbers.
That's not to say that Microsoft, Compaq (later Hewlett-Packard), and Intel didn't have a chance. Remember the Compaq iPAQ PDA that debuted way back in 2000, powered by an Intel StrongARM chip running an early version of Windows Mobile?
That device had a lot of potential. The operative word being "potential." An iPAQ could have been an iPhone. Or at the very least an iPod. And everybody could be drooling over iPAQs today instead of iPhones. Or using iPAQs instead of BlackBerrys. But of course things didn't turn out that way.
Fast forward to 2010 (January?). Apple announces a tablet and suddenly everyone wants a tablet. (Or iSlate, if you will.)
And what have Microsoft, Intel, HP, and others been offering in the interim years when they had every opportunity to come out with a blockbuster tablet? Unattractive, bulky, half-baked convertible laptops that, let's put it this way, have not taken the PC market by storm.
So, here's the $64,000 question, uh, make that the $64 billion question. Why can't the combined R&D smarts, market clout, and overall technological resources of Microsoft-Intel-HP-Dell come up with a thin, sexy compelling tablet and/or media pad that will turn heads and convince the unbelievers (the average why-would-I-need-something-like-that consumer) that a tablet is a must-have product?
Answer: Because Apple will.
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