After checking a few posts on the announced Microsoft Surface tablet, my opinion is that they hit a sweet spot here. It’s going to sell very well. The Surface tablet will run Flash and it will run Windows RT apps that can also run on a desktop in the future when Windows 8 is released. The Surface Pro edition will run all your existing Windows software and can be used in your home environment and in a business setting.
What I am seeing here is that the desktop world and tablet world are integrating slowly but surely. A few years from now, a lot of people won’t own a desktop or a laptop: they’ll own a tablet. It will be more than enough for everyday use for the majority of users. Hell, it will even be enough for most business users as well! This will be especially true if companies start making docks for tablets like Microsoft’s Surface that will transform it into a laptop-like device.
My bet is that an awful lot of people will want to own a Surface tablet or an other Windows tablet from an other manufacturer. People are already used to Windows on their machines, at home as well as at work. The step to a Windows tablet will be much easier for them than stepping into Apple’s iOS world. That will not mean that Microsoft is going to reign the tablet space. Apple is the undisputed leader here and will keep that position for the at least the coming 3 to 5 years. Manufacturers of Android tablets should be more worried in my opinion. They could lose market share to Microsoft’s Surface easily, especially when you consider the hybrid desktop/tablet usage combination.
Finally, here is a post with over a dozen of links to news coverage on the Microsoft Surface:
http://www.windowsobserver.com/2012/06/18/microsofts-new-tablet-floats-to-the-surface/
On an iPhone, every app lives in its own “walled garden”. An app can only read and write files in its own document folder and cannot access the document folders of other apps or files of the core system.
The statements of Best Buy’s CEO don’t surprise me. Considering that the tablet era has only just begun, I think that the market share of tablets will grow even more in the future. The iPad won’t be the only contender in this market. In the fourth quarter of 2010 and in 2011 a lot of new tablets will be introduced. Most of them will be based on Google’s Android OS. Examples that