Tablet, schmablet: What would it be good for?

Suzanne Choney • E-mail

Everyone seems tablet crazy, or at least tablet-rumor crazy. But why? Who needs or wants a tablet when we already have a huge array of smartphones, netbooks, e-readers and a crop of new lightweight laptops that provide the same features and more?

Popular Mechanics' November issue names TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington's "CrunchPad" tablet as one of the 10 "most brilliant products" of this year — and it's not even out yet. Supposedly Apple's coming out with a tablet early next year, Microsoft's got one on board and so, it seems, does every major manufacturer of any tech device that's ever been made.

Apple's not commenting, and when a prototype of a Microsoft tablet was "leaked" recently to Web site Gizmodo.com some weeks back, Microsoft did not comment. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

"For the most part, these are digital unicorns; they live only in the imagination of those who speculate on them," says Michael Gartenberg, longtime technology observer who is also vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC.

"Right now, what we know is that we’ve seen some concepts and prototype design work that leaked out of Microsoft. Microsoft does dozens of these type of projects every year to experiment with. Almost none of them ever make it into products.

"And as for the rumors of mythical Apple device, all I can say is, for every rumor that is out there, there are two other rumors that have contradictory information and tell an entirely different story."

The tablet fever may be due to the quest for ever-thinner devices, says one technologist.

Gizmodo.com This photo of a Microsoft tablet prototype was leaked to Gizmodo.com recently. Microsoft has declined to comment.

"We have entered an era of the thin and light computers and, rather than worrying about power, we’ve become obsessed with the concept of thinness," wrote John Biggs in a recent piece for CrunchGear.com "This is why Apple, in their wisdom, created the MacBook Air and the iPod Touch."

In one of the Apple scenarios, the tablet looks like a larger iPod Touch, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who wrote about it in a research note last summer. Munster said he had spoken with an Asian component supplier that had received orders from Apple for a touch-screen device that would need to be filled by late this year.

Munster estimated the device would be priced between $500 and $700 and would compete with netbooks, the 2- and 3-pound laptops that have become popular in the past year because of their prices (around $350) and portability.

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Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for The NPD Group, believes the "focus on tablets now stems from the kinds of changes we've seen take place" with smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerrys and Palm Pre, and "to a lesser extent," PCs.

There's growing interest in using these devices for "media consumption and Internet access," he said, and not just for the basics like phone calls, calendar keeping or word processing.

"It's the difference between the iPhone and earlier smartphones that were essentially wireless PDAs," he said. "With the Web, digital media and casual games require relatively little keyboard input."

A tablet that has a screen size of between 7 to 10 inches, he said, "can take smartphone-style media consumption and optimize it for content — such as the Web, e-books, video/videoconferencing, photos and games — that can take advantage of a larger screen."

Such devices, Rubin said, "would be a better fit for around the home, or possibly in the rear seat of a car, particularly if they had embedded cellular access. Of course, inexpensive netbooks may prove to be competition for such devices ... as they would likely use similar display technology and Windows 7, for example, has extensive touch-screen support."

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