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The Acer founder, Stan Shih, seems to have set a cat amongst the pigeons by claiming that he did not regard tablet PCs or even ultrabooks as the future of computing. In his own words, Fads for ultrabooks and tablet PCs are short-term phenomena. My advise to companies in the notebook supply chain is that they should come out with more value-added products through innovation. However, it is fair to point out that Acer has a 7-inch tablet in the pipeline that Shih believes will stir up the market.
Shih and many others like him are of the opinion that despite all the innovations that the world of computing has witnessed, PCs continue to be the base of the IT industry. Tablet computers have also evolved from the same PC base. In times to come, all the computing devices, including the tablets, will have to base themselves on the PC platform to create even more add-on value. According to Shih, Apples success must be attributed to its out of the box thinking while launching the iPad.
Of course, the thinking of the Apple CEO Steve Jobs is completely different from that of Shih. Steve Jobs has famously stated, Were living in a post-PC world. There is no dearth of analysts who support Steve Jobs point of view. There is a recent Gartner report that shows that tablets are already eating into the PC and laptop market in the developed world. Samsungs latest tablet, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has according to some retailers become the fastest selling tablet since the iPad 2.
However, we would be making a grave mistake if we develop the impression that the tablets are going to be the hot favourites for all times to come. Perhaps it is the relentless hype that is driving up the sales. The out of the box thinking that Apple seems to have indulged in might have more to do with a glitzy sales pitch than with technology. The tablet might in the end turn out to be nothing more than a passing fad, as Acers Stan Shih expects.
In order to predict the long-term future of the tablets, we need to first understand why the initial iPad became so popular. In fact, the success of the first iPad can be linked directly to the popularity of the iPhone, which had been launched by Apple earlier. The users of iPhone had already become habituated to using the vibrant touchscreen to take care of many tasks for which they used to go to their PC earlier. Things like emailing, surfing, maps, games, etc were now done on the iPhone screen.
These users often found themselves wondering, how much more fun the iPhone could be, if its screen could be a little larger. Enter the iPad, which is nothing more than an iPhone with a larger screen size. The iPhone users promptly made a beeline for the new iPad, making the device unbelievably successful. But eventually these users might start realising that the iPad is too large and somewhat heavy. It is so large that it cant fit into your pocket. Hence it is not suitable for minor computing works on the go. There is no reason why people should want to carry these devices around when they already have a smartphone.
As the tablet is without a keyboard, its functionality is significantly lower. In fact, a netbook, which costs much less, has considerably more memory and storage and a much better CPU than most tablets in the market. There was a time when PDAs were the prime objects of desire. Today no one cares for the PDA. The same might happen to the tablet once the hype dies down. History may prove Stan Shih to be right.
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