| Analysis: What's ahead for the Tablet PC? |
Nov. 09, 2002
Nov. 8 -- The most plain-spoken participant at this week’s splashy launch of the Tablet PC may have been Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. As expected, he sang the praises of the Tablet PC. At the same time, he was surprisingly frank in acknowledging the serious marketing and technological challenges that lie ahead if this new category of mobile computing is to catch fire.
Gates was joined on stage in New York by PC industry royalty in what amounted to the biggest pen-computing revival since Apple’s Newton of the early 1990s. Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, Acer founder Stan Shih, and Toshiba senior vice president Atsutoshi Nishida were among the participants.
Their consensus is that tablets, while evolutionary technology wise, constitute a new category of computing platform. And, as with all first cuts, there are kinks that will have to be ironed out and folded into subsequent products.
The biggest question remains the viability of pen computing itself. Though perhaps its biggest supporter, Gates noted that, “The fact is, handwriting recognition is very valuable, but imperfect [today].”
Indeed, the inability of computers to recognize cursive input is the main reason pen computing has stalled thus far. However, Microsoft is hoping it has raised the bar with its new “digital ink” software. The handwriting smarts of that code--it’s based on neural networks--was ten years and tens of millions of dollars in the making.
Just how well this digital ink works, as well as how readily the new tablet form factor is accepted are the big question marks at this point. “The key to any phenomenon in personal computing is word of mouth,” said Gates. “All we can do is get the correct combination of hardware and software into the hands of the first 100,000 users.”
“Any new technology starts with the early adopters,” concurred Scott Eckert, chief executive of Motion Computing. Only then, he said, can it break out into the mass market.
With so many new tablets on tap, it’s clear that many PC manufacturers believe that mass market is at hand. HP’s Fiorina insisted that tablets would not cannibalize sales from exiting laptops or handhelds.
Acer chairman Shih demurred on domestic prospects, noting his greater familiarity with the Asian market. “I’m going to make it very hot, at least in Taiwan,” Shih said. “I expect that next year, 10-percent to 15-percent of our notebooks will be tablets.”
“This creates an additional market; this is about drawing new users,” said HP’s Fiorina. Compaq will price its tablets competitively with it laptops, at $1,700 to $2,000.
As for pricing on the engineering front, Shih noted that the cost of the bill of materials would decrease as individual components required for tablets come down in price. “The price of displays, memory, storage will keep dropping, so we expect in the long term all laptops will have tablets,” Shih said.
One of the possibilities envisioned is display based on self-imaging diodes, which would make be thinner and consume less power than today’s screens. Other projected advances are: direct methanol fuel cell batteries for longer operation between charges; 1.8-inch hard drive, followed closely by solid-state storage (i.e., a RAM-based “hard drive”), and better heat-dissipation technology. -- Alexander Wolfe, WindowsForDevices.com
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