As expected, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer debuted a tablet device during his opening keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show Wednesday night -- but not the would-be Apple tablet-killer, codenamed
"Courier," that many expected.
"There's another contender in the emerging tablet-computer war," wrote USAToday.com, under the headline, "HP enters the tablet-computer fray."
"It's a Windows 7 touch device, so it's nice in an accessible, netbooky (yeah, I'm guessing relatively cheap) context," writes Gizmodo. "But
it's not exactly the Courier we have lusted after from Microsoft in our dreams."
As VentureBeat speculated, "The Courier, an under-development machine ... is more likely to be
Microsoft's response to the unicorn-like Apple tablet."
The facts remain that the tablet market is a nearly a decade old, saw revenue decline by 25% in 2008, and was thought to have
dropped again in 2009. The real stimulant, as IDC analyst David Daoud tells USA Today, is expected to come from Apple. "Apple could do for the tablet market what it did for smartphones with iPhone."
"Thanks in part to rampant speculation over Apples own much-rumored tablet PC, the devices have become one of the most talked-about items at CES,"
wrote eWeek. "Ballmer cast tablets as a logical step in the evolution of PCs,
while also emphasizing how the cloud is increasingly key."
Yet, as All Things Digital explained, "The Apple device is garnering the expected flood
of hype, of course ... So don't expect Ballmer to pointlessly go against the tide of this particular tsunami, thereby painting its slate efforts as also-ran."
Read the whole story at VentureBeat et al. »