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 From Stone Age to Ruggedized
People have used tablets since the Stone Age. In fact, the tablet form factor is the oldest known type of written communication (if you don’t count scratching on a cave wall). Who knew Moses was such a trendsetter when he broke out those stone tablets?
Fast forward a couple millennia and tablet computers abound, modern tablets that have existed for decades by now… Remember the 1987 pioneering flop, the Apple Newton? Or what about the proclamation in 2001 by former Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates: "It's a PC that is virtually without limits and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.” OK, so he was a few years off, but why the fuss over tablets today?
“Fuss” is putting it mildly: tablet computer sales are on a strong “up and to the right” trajectory. A 2010 study performed by Forrester shows tablets are truly the future of the computing world. They are predicted to overtake netbook sales by 2012 and desktop sales by 2015, in a clear continuation of mankind’s long-term love of tablets. Tablets are the toy (or tool) in between smart-phones and netbooks that we didn’t know we needed two years ago. Then Apple introduced the iPad in January of 2010, and consumers went bananas. IPads proved perfect for watching movies, texting, emailing, surfing the internet or listening to music. Most importantly, they are starting to find their proper place in the work environment. When the Motorola Xoom tablet, using the Android Honeycomb OS, hit at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2011, it walked away with the Best of Show award. The battle began in earnest for marketplace dominance. Along with dozens of other companies, Motorola is throwing elbows at the table for a big piece of that delicious Apple pie. What we are seeing today is the effect of “consumer tablet love” on the enterprise. Users have begun demanding a “tablet OS” user experience from their corporate IT tools. But even though Windows dominates the enterprise mobile computing world today, Microsoft has fallen behind in tablets. (That may change when the Windows 8 Tablet appears in June 2011.) Meanwhile, projections show that the Android market will reach 425,000 apps by August 2011, effectively overtaking the Apple App Store in size. Positions are changing fast: Apple currently leads the consumer market, while Microsoft holds its top rank in the enterprise and Android keeps gaining ground in both. So “the fuss” that’s now reaching into the enterprise revolves around unique new OS’s, swift processing speed, elegant user interfaces, improved storage capacity, lengthy battery life, screen clarity, ubiquitous wireless access and instantly available software applications that make tablets useful for hundreds of new situations. The next phase will focus on making these delicate new mobile tablets a little more rugged. AbeTech has offered rugged Windows tablet brands such as Panasonic, Xplore, Motion Computing and MobileDemand for years. Users are also hungry to see how the Android OS performs on a rugged machine. Motorola is answering that call with an Android tablet in Q4, 2011. In the meantime, AbeTech is not standing around scratching on cave walls. We are making the future happen by offering a full range of tablet computers and related consulting services to help you navigate from the Stone Age to the Rugged Age. Steve Schmidt |
