Is the Tablet War Fizzing Out?

Posted on May 19 by Kelly Johnson

This is a special guest post by Shannon Wills. Read more from Wills at her Internet Provider blog. She welcomes your comments and questions, .

Competition drives innovation and inspires creativity. So just how good is the news that Microsoft has scrapped Courier, its prototype tablet device, or rumors that HP is rethinking its Windows 7 tablet, the Slate?

It’s definitely not good, not if we want a worthy competitor to Apple’s iPad, which now enjoys a market monopoly when it comes to snazzy tablet devices.

Apparently Microsoft’s tablet was just a concept and it’s not likely to see the light of day anytime in the near future. HP’s Slate is not so easy to dismiss. The company revealed an actual working model of the Slate earlier this year and said it was “committed” to making the product available by the end of this year.

Industry experts are scratching their heads trying to understand why HP is delaying the Slate’s launch. Apple has moved over 1 million iPads in the past month in the US alone. There’s no reason for HP to worry about a potential market for its own device. Some theorize that Windows 7 could be the problematic issue and that HP has doubts it the Slate’s battery can sustain an OS as resource heavy as Win 7 and still run various applications on the device. Others feel that it’s just a matter of time before the Slate is available and that HP wants to build the perfect iPad competitor, now that they’ve seen what Apple’s product actually does. Yet another group points to HP’s recent acquisition of Palm, surmising that the Slate could be made available in two versions, one with Windows 7 and the other with Palm’s webOS.

If HP presents the Slate in the next few months, it has to be better than the iPad in most aspects. Also, it has to address the obvious drawbacks that the iPad possesses and add options for printing, Flash, a built-in camera, and multi-tasking features. It’s likely HP needs some more time to perfect such a device.

There’s hope in the air from the direction of the RIM camp. The makers of BlackBerry are working on a tablet device that could be called Cobalt or Blackstone and available sometime in 2011. Leaks from the industry say that the gadget will be sleeker and slimmer than the iPad. But then, 2011 is a long way off, and if HP doesn’t get it together, it’s safe to say that Apple’s iPad will remain the undisputed ruler of the tablet world for some time to come.