The Tablet PC Revolution
Betting that 2010 will be the year of the tablet computer...
Of course, we've heard such predictions
about tablets before. This time, the reasoning goes, is different,
because the devices will have more sophisticated touch screens and
consumers are more used to virtual keyboards. Most importantly,
Apple just might be jumping into the fray.
Tablets, you may recall, are either
laptops with a screen that twists and folds flat and uses a stylus
or fingertip for input, or something more like an oversize iPod
Touch that's used for tasks like checking e-mail, getting on the
Web, and watching videos.
True, market researchers at DisplaySearch
predict sales for all touch-screen devices will be growing from $3.5
billion this year to more than $6 billion by 2012. But if 2010 is
going be the year of the tablet--meaning regular folks start buying
these en masse--someone has to get it right. 
So far, we're still waiting.
Toshiba, Archos, Fujitsu, and Lenovo have
touch-screen tablets coming our way in the next few months, none of
which should revolutionize our already established expectations of
tablet PCs.
That hasn't stopped people like Toshiba
executive Marco Perino from declaring that "home multimedia tablets
will be one of the fastest-growing products in the consumer
electronics space." Fujitsu's Troy Nakamura said it's the right time
for tablets this time around because "people (are) using touch in
their daily lives with Smartphone's, airport kiosks, ATMs...we're
becoming more conditioned to use hands and fingers on certain
machines. The tablet fits nicely into that."
But do we really need yet another mobile
form factor for accessing the Web and watching videos? The hottest
computing category at the moment is Netbooks, which grew 40 percent
during the second quarter of this year compared with the same
quarter a year earlier. That's almost twice as fast as the rate of
traditional notebooks, which grew 22 percent.
As these more traditional types of mobile
computers continue to fly off the shelves, it begs the question: Why
do we need tablets?
An Apple touch-screen tablet--discussed
ad nausem by the tech press, including at CNET--may or may not
appear at the beginning of early 2010. CEO Steve Jobs himself is
said to be overseeing the project, but there's no concrete evidence
it actually exists.
Apple does have an established reputation
of thinking thoroughly through any prospective market and coming up
with a product that ties hardware and software together in a simple
way that often becomes a personal fashion statement, as with the
iPhone and iPod.
