Microsoft's Ballmer: Focused On Delivering Windows Tablets ASAP

Personally, despite all of their hard work. I don't see the Windows Tablets taking off anytime soon, basically a Windows Tablet has been reneglated to business and corporate use, what can run a tablet now is Cellphone OS's like Android and iOS.

Well all of the people that were gonna make a windows based tablet... backed out and moved to a different OS.

If they could make windows 7 light enough to feel snappy on a tablet... it would sell because it would be something people are familiar with.

>He also couldn't help but poke at his arch rival, saying about Apple and the iPad: "they've sold certainly more than I'd like them to have sold."

Ha ha, ha! that Blue Steve! What a laff-a-minute guy.

So why not take one of the Linux tablets that are coming out Any Day Now, and slap Windows 7 on them? Couldn't be any worse than the last attempt at putting Windows on a tablet-- which, you know, was the reason that it was generally believed that no one wanted a tablet computer in the first place.

I'm getting a tablet with a REAL OS on it!!! No iOS4 Crap.

>> Microsoft isn't just waiting around for Apple to rule the tablet PC market all by their lonesome.

Yes, I'm sure they'll simply step in and run them out of business with a much more innovative product, like they did with the Zune vs. iPod.

I love how Microsoft is continuing to innovate, rather than just moving from market to market copying products that someone else has proven.

I'm sure that once they've got a majority of this market locked up, they'll continue to pour development dollars into this pad and not simply move all those people onto cloning the next thing that comes out of Google Labs. That will ensure this market doesn't stagnate and slow technological improvements to a crawl.  It's really great for us consumers.

Oh... wait...

acarzt:

Well all of the people that were gonna make a windows based tablet... backed out and moved to a different OS.

Pretty close, Acarzt.  I still get the idea that it will be shipping with hardware partners though - and not be a MS/Zune-branded product.

I believe this is Ballmer letting his investors know that they still have hardware partners left, after some high-profile people like Asus decided to go with Android and Linux.

MS feels it can't simply let Win7 die in this market, because it might give people (specifically businesses) the idea that other operating systems can get the job done and reliably interact with their existing systems.  This is basically a tourniquet to protect their stock price while they shore up lock-in for their desktop operating system market.

All of these articles overlook that there already is a W7 tablet, and it's been here nearly a year. Archos SA unleashed their W7 slate on the market nearly six months before the iPad was released. It has W7, a similar form factor with 10.1" WIDESCREEN. You can buy it now. It has the Intel Atom Z515 CPU running at 1.2 GHz, a full GB of RAM. It has most of the stuff critics of the iPad would add: Memory, USB 2.0 port, the Windows application infrastructure, 60GB storage, webcam and microphone for video chat, matte display. The darned thing even has an internal PCIe slot. If you want a W7 tablet, here's your W7 tablet.

But moving units? I've not seen one in the field, nobody in business is talking about it. Windows 7 on a slate is, well, Windows 7 on a slate. We've been there, done that. We have the T-shirt. For this product in particular we're in the fourth quarter after release and if it was going to take off then by now it would have.

Archos SA is in France. Their market cap is $94M. They're losing money. Their net profit margin for Q4 2009 was -45%. Their 1Q2010 financial press release gives total revenue as $19.7M for all products. http://www.archos.com/corporate/investors/financial_doc/ARCHOS_CA2010Q1_EN.pdf Obviously with revenues like that they could not have sold 37,000 Archos 9 units in the second quarter of release even if that were their only product, and it's not. A more reasonable estimate might be 6,000 units per quarter, or 2,000 units per month, worldwide. The company sells Android tablets, as well as other form factors and media players that are popular in the Europe market. The prior quarter (the release quarter) was only a bit better at $22.1M, and that was the Christmas season without any competing Windows 7 slates or iPads in the marketplace - or any even announced. If their W7 slate had taken off like the iPad did, they'd be moving $1.8B per quarter on that product alone. The iPad is moving 1,000,000 units a month, in the summer when sales are usually slow.

The CNET review is here: http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/archos-9-pc-tablet/4505-3126_7-33800951.html apparently the customer reviews are less kind than CNET, and the CNET editors only gave the thing 2.5 stars of 5. Customers feel the same way, but if you read the customer reviews some are obviously shills and that still doesn't get the customer reviews up to three stars of five.

So HP paid $1,200,000,000 for Palm because the idea of trying to make money engineering a W7 tablet platform to garner a share of that glorious $1M per month W7 tablet market didn't seem like a good business plan. You have to hand it to HP: Their websites may be lame, but there's no moss growing on their CEO.

Introducing the 11" Zune :P

if it were like a 9" win7 phone then it might get interesting!

Well... they will eventually have something... but with as many vendors that are jumping ship... hat something that they get will probably suck lol