Waiting To Exhale
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
By Ross Rubin, Executive Director, Industry Analysis
Given all the outlandish rumors circulating around Apple’s forthcoming announcement on Wednesday, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the purported Apple tablet can become transparent and levitate. Indeed, it is otherwise difficult to explain how the device was able to hover above the CES show floor, invisible to everyone’s eyes but prominent in everyone’s imagination.
The promise of the device certainly did not stop a glut of e-readers from appearing in the market. Companies such as Audiovox, Skiff, Spring Design, and Samsung showed off e-paper offerings to compete with those from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony. But while there was plenty of talk of more versatile, multipurpose slates, few such devices were to be found. Even Toshiba, which announced its JournE Touch tablet for European markets last fall, abstained from bringing it stateside at CES.
Indeed, one of the few tablets to debut at the show is designed to be shipped as part of a more traditional device. The Lenovo U1 won accolades for its design in which a tablet computer detaches from a netbook form factor and can function independently. It’s a Windows-based netbook in clamshell mode and a Linux-based Web appliance in slate mode. While the device cleverly subsumes the tablet into the netbook purchase, it does so at a price of close to #1,000. That could be at least as expensive as buying two devices anyway.
This year’s CES stalemate reminded one of a CES three years ago when, more than 400 miles west of Las Vegas, Steve Jobs promised to reinvent the telephone with the release of the iPhone. That set off a frenzy in which rivals first tried to match the iPhone’s look and input methods, and later its capabilities and application support. Now, the company that goes first is setting itself up for arrows in his back. But unlike in the folk tale of William Tell, those arrows will be coming from an Apple, not toward it.
Tags: Apple, CES, e-readers, iPhone, tablet
Consumer Technology | Ross Rubin, Executive Director, Industry Analysis | 
January 26, 2010 10:21 am
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