eWeek - June 7, 2010

This

The business of tablets

In this week’s cover story, Wayne Rash looks at what’s coming up next in lap- top computing for the enterprise and iscusses whether the recent surge of excitement around Apple’s iPad will amount to anything more than a consumer electronics fad.

I’m not sure whether tablet computers will take off in the business world, but I’m more optimistic about the tablet tack that Apple and its eventual Linux-powered Android and WebOS-based rivals have taken than I am about the course that Microsoft set a decade ago when the company began pushing its tablet

Jason Brooks

PC platform.

The tablet PCs that Microsoft and its

When considering how Apple has suc-
ceeded with the iPhone and appears to be
succeeding with the iPad—two product classes
that Microsoft has been working hard on for
years now—and thinking about how Apple
recently overtook Microsoft in market capital-
ization for the first time, it’s tempting to envision
a changing of the guard among computing
platform powers.
Complicating that vision, particularly where
enterprises are concerned, is the fact that as
Apple- and Google-powered devices have
multiplied, these products have relied consis-
tently on Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology
to provide Exchange connectivity and core
management functions such as remote wipe.
Just as devices and features that consum-
ers demand bleed over into what enterprises
deploy, I believe that the management and
security features companies require will find
traction in the consumer
space. What’s more, I think
that Microsoft’s willingness
to embrace other plat-
forms—as it has done
with the Office Web App
functionality in the Office
2010 release I reviewed
on page 18—will be key
to its continued enterprise
and consumer success.
We’ve moved beyond
the days when a particu-
lar vendor controls the
entire computing stack, and the fact that
Apple insists on that sort of complete control
will eventually limit the reach of its products.
I’m interested in seeing how Google’s more
flexible approach to platform control with
Android plays out against Apple and the
iPad. I’ll be keeping a close eye on these
companies to see whether they continue
to seize opportunities to expand onto new
platforms—regardless of whether they con-
trol those platforms. ;

OEM allies have produced over the past 10 or so years have closely resembled notebook computers, which is one of the reasons why they haven’t taken off in a big way. Rather than figure out how to downsize its notebook computers and operating systems into tablets, Apple began with a smartphone platform and scaled it up. That put them in a good place to address the trickiest tablet issues—the ones revolving around input, power and cost—from the outset.

‘APPLE BEGAN WITH A SMARTPHONE PLATFORM AND SCALED IT UP. THAT PUT THEM IN A GOOD PLACE.’

I spent some time trying out the iPad unit that P. J. Connolly reviewed this week on page 24, and the differences between it and the tablet PCs I’ve used in the past are dramatic. The lighter weight and lower cost of the iPad, combined with its very good (albeit plug-in-challenged) Web browser, add up to a device with a lot of potential.