Who was conspicuously absent from TabletPC launch
WinInfo | at | by Mike
The glitzy Tablet PC launch this week was as notable for who didn't attend as for who did. On the hardware front, a few big players such as Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba showed up, but many of the Tablet PC devices were made by companies not normally associated with PCs, such as Viewsonic, or companies no one has ever heard about, like Motion Computing. Where was IBM and Dell, for example? Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell said this week that he didn't expect Tablet PCs to be very successful, but that his company would enter the market if proven wrong. IBM is even more negative, describing the new products as "an experiment" that doesn't fit in the company's strategic goals. I think IBM is wrong, and I think Dell is playing it say, like it's done in many product categories (it's first Pocket PC will ship almost three years after the first generation devices, largely because of Dell's wait-and-see attitude). Markets in the Far East alone spell success for the Tablet PC, and if HP's innovative design is any indication, we could be looking at the future of the PC itself. Tablet PCs aren't an experiment or a curiosity.