Tablet?
Like an 80s spy novel, Microsoft dropped a sparse note late last week with: "This will be a major Microsoft announcement -- you will not want to miss it."
It's a tablet most agree, Microsoft's first partnership with Barnes & Noble, others say. According to CNet:
If true, the report suggests that a new Microsoft tablet would be aimed at Amazon's Kindle Fire rather than Apple's slate.
Let's hope that part is true. iPad killers tend to turn the delete button on themselves, even if the ever-hopeful -- wishing Apple will get a real run for its money -- persist. Stephen Chapman put it best at ZDNet.
For the sake of competition and consumer choice, I really do hope that Microsoft is able to step their game up to the point of going toe-to-toe with Apple, but my skeptical disposition isn’t quite as optimistic or hopeful. Truth be told, I’m smitten with my iPad and the plethora of apps therein.
So maybe a Kindle Fire fighter, not an iPad killer, but Microsoft might create something in its own category. Think about the XBox for a moment, one the great triumphs of Microsoft in the past decade. Think about all that it offers -- and what it doesn't. High-end games with multi-player integration, dozens of streaming options from a host of partners via XBox Live, a very simple user interface that never intends to be anything but pure entertainment. Packaged in a tightly controlled environment where apps trickle in, not pour.
An XBox tablet makes sense.
Adding Nook-like elements to it wouldn't hurt -- Barnes & Noble, too, has mainly limited its e-reader apps to entertainment-centric endeavors. This has also been Fire's main focus. And that stands to reason, because both the Nook and Kindle came from a specific point of view -- reading. iPads can be nearly full-functioning computers. That also makes sense, since Apple comes from serving that kind of user.
As a company with a history, Microsoft now finds itself somewhere between. It is a software maker largely known for function, but has also built a gaming system ideal as a TV streaming device.
If you look at today's tablet options, what's missing from the list above? Certainly not catch-all tablets, or e-reader-plus tablets. You can do anything from write a report to watch HBO on a tablet. But what about something analyst Rob Enderle described to Computerworld as a, " Xbox-like tablet subsidized with games that users would buy"?
If Microsoft could work the key functionalities of XBox into it -- mobile gaming augmentation that doesn't stink, a Kinect element as part of the camera integration, XBox Live ... that does not sound like a loser concept to me.
