Can Microsoft’s combative CEO needle his nemesis once more by stealing Apple’s thunder during the CES? That’s the question many are asking following reports Steve Ballmer will introduce a tablet during a keynote speech for the gadget get-together in Las Vegas.
The HP-made device “will be touted as a multimedia whiz with e-reader and multi-touch functions,” the New York Times reported late Tuesday. For months, rumor has swirled around Apple prepping a tablet to possibly launch later this month and begin sales in March. The chatter has reached such a crescendo that a fellow NYT columnist called the rumored product from Cupertino, the “Jesus tablet.”
The reported Microsoft device, even before its introduction, has a steep hill to climb to win over onlookers. “This product better be good because Apple is expected to unveil its take on the slate/tablet fom factor later this month,” The NYT’s Ashlee Vance warns.
“The last thing Mr. Ballmer wants to hold up is a me-too device,” she adds. It’s unsure whether the reported Microsoft tablet resembles the Courier. A multi-touch product with two 7-inch screens, the Courier was a “late prototype,” according to a gadget blog in September.
Analysts are rather non-plussed on the possibility of Microsoft’s tablet. “We would have to wait and see what it looks like,” Piper Jaffrey’s senior analyst Gene Munster told Cult of Mac. “The numbers that we have talked about for the tablet (2 million units in the first 12 months), factor in competition in those first 12 months,” the analyst said.
[Via NYT, AppleInsider, Mac Rumors, Gizmodo]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
