Digital Home Thoughts: Is This Microsoft's Swan Song for the Tablet?

"For the past six months I’ve been sitting on the sidelines watching Tablet dominate the news cycle. From the Crunchpad to the JooJoo, from the Courier to the iSlate, from the Android Tablet to Windows 7 Starter Edition Tablets – it is almost dizzying to watch. Engadget is covering Tablet like they’ve loved it from the beginning. The New York Times is declaring 2010 to be the year of Tablet."

Image courtesy of Motion Computing.

If the media determined what sold in the marketplace, you would think that by the end of 2010, everyone and their dog will have a tablet. Rob Bushway is right though; Microsoft has been in and dominated the tablet industry for years. Having used various tablets over the years, I have to say that Microsoft seems to have treated their tablets like an afterthought, a sideline to their core business. If would almost compare it to how they have treated their Windows Mobile division for the past few years. With prices on computers having drastically dropped, tablets will likely move out of vertical markets like medicine, warehousing and power business users, to the regular consumer. While there is some evidence of Microsoft turning their attention to tablets and touch, they may move too slowly, and like the media player, give away the market to a competitor.