Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft, said Monday that he still believes in the Tablet PC and repeated a prediction that, with better hardware and software, it could still dominate traditional laptop PCs.
It’s now a little over three and a half years into the time period he set, and to date the Tablet PC has managed to do only marginally better than the now defunct Comdex trade show. A handful of vendors market Tablet PCs, but specialized markets such as health care account for a large percentage of sales. Other users, and those in business, have yet to take to the form factor in a big way.
Approximately 640,000 Tablet PCs were shipped in 2004, and this year shipments are expected to hit 1.2 million units, which corresponds to about 2 percent of the global portable PC market, according to a February report from research firm IDC. “IDC continues to believe that tablet PC technology will become an integral part of future portable PC designs, but adoption of the technology will be slower than originally anticipated,” the report says.
“We need to keep investing, both in the hardware and software side, before it moves into the mainstream,” said Gates at a news conference here on Monday. “It’s not yet in the mainstream. I totally believe in the tablet.”
Source: PCWorld
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