Microsoft could see a two-pronged attack in 2010 hitting both ends of their consumer market for Windows 7. It’s no secret that Google will be launching into the netbook / low end market by the end of the year with Chrome OS, but there’s been fervent speculation about a forthcoming Tablet computer from Apple, frankly the only company who can revolutionise this market and make “the next big thing every year since 2002” sexy at last.
As if industry watchers know that Santa delivered a very special package to Steve Jobs on Christmas day, Apple shares have risen by more than 11% in the last three weeks, and received an additional 1% push yesterday.
This is fuelling speculation that the big announcement will come on January 26th at San Francisco’s Buena Centre which they have booked for a “major product announcement”.
Looking at Apple’s product line up and the announcements they made in the latter half of 2009, when they released new iPods, the iPhone 3Gs and new Macs, the speculators could well be on the money this time. Certainly, from Apple’s perspective it makes no sense to encourage such a steep and sudden rise in the value of the company, only for the expected announcement to not come and that value to drop sharply afterwards, which could worry shareholders.
So what would an Apple tablet be? It certainly wouldn’t be cheap, that’s for sure. Apple isn’t known for cheap products and there’s no reason to assume they’ll start now. Such a high-end tablet would strike at the heart of Windows 7’s new multi-touch functionality on laptops and ultra-portables. This release, combined with Chrome OS at the end of the year would cause Microsoft significant problems in mobile computing.
A few years ago, against Windows XP for instance, this wouldn’t have been a problem because the laptop market was small. Things have changed now with laptops outselling desktop PCs in recent years. The sudden popularity of touchscreen phones and ebook readers has demonstrated how the consumer market seems to be moving away from keyboards at long last. Microsoft fought hard last year to get Windows 7 on to netbooks and the laptop / ultraportable market is a huge earner for them.
The biggest question mark sits over what operating system such a device would run. Both OS X and iPhone OS could do the job (with modification) but the latter would look more likely. This could spell bad news for OS X, which has already had a bad year. While Mac hardware sales are up, the lacklustre launch of Snow Leopard garnered significant criticism from the press.
