Microsoft about to unveil their own tablet | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft about to unveil their own tablet

pcworld.com

10 pointsKeyframe18 comments

Microsoft is a software company. They've lost big $ on any hardware product they've ever shipped except for mice and keyboards, and without exception all of them were 'me too' products.

All this is is a very transparent attempt at undercutting their competition, if the zune was any indication of how well they'll stack up then Apple has (unfortunately) very little to worry about.

What is much more interesting here is if there really is a market for these devices as large as is being predicted.

Agree. I like the Courier concept, but I'm skeptical about MS's ability to deliver on hardware. Although to be fair, their mice are great.

I also share the same sentiments towards Google and their recent hardware follies.

FTA: "Hewlett-Packard has reportedly been working with Microsoft in preparation of the new slate-type computer, to be announced during the evening keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas."

So, assuming that the article is accurate in this respect, I'm guessing that it won't be specifically Microsoft hardware.

Isn't the XBox a successful Microsoft hardware product? I think it actually turned a profit in '08ish.

It is still a net loss and will continue to be so for at least several years.

Xbox has done pretty well. There's too much blind Microsoft hate on this site.

Xbox is a net loss, and according to someone that works there (who is active on HN) they hope to be in the black 'somewhere in the next couple of years'.

So, no, Xbox has not done 'pretty well'.

They are now 5 quarters profitable, but overall they're still in a very deep hole.

They might be slowly crawling out of a big hole, but that doesn't mean they're not doing well. I'd argue that the cost so far should be considered more of an investment than a loss. They entered a difficult market dominated by two large players with a lot of brand/name loyalty (i.e. fanbois) and huge barriers to entry. Over the last 8 or so years, the Xbox brand has become number 1 or 2 (depending on which metric you use), beating out the last gen's leader (Sony). They've also become the leader in the online console space where profit margins are high and revenue is recurring (think WOW).

All this isn't to say that MS won't mess up the courier concept but that they're better than many people give them credit for.

The question I pose to you isn't - is the Xbox hardware profitable? It's - is the Xbox software profitable enough to make Microsoft a profit taken the hardware into consideration. If so doesn't that make the Xbox profitable? HP and other printer company do kind of the same thing. They sell the printer at a loss and make money selling the ink.

Except that "how well they'll stack up" with Apple isn't measured in profit; it's measured in sales or market share. While the Xbox might not yet be net profitable, it does have enough market share to claim that it stacks up with its competition. I'm not saying the Courier will be competitive, but I hardly think you can, a priori, write Microsoft off in this market.

The Zune is not an indication of "how well they'll stack up," because by the time they released the Zune, Apple had already sold about 100 million iPods.

This time they're both starting from zero, so it'll be very interesting to see who gains more market fighting on equal ground. (Perhaps the first time we see them in this situation?)

'Microsoft is a software company.'

They're less than that: they're a client/server software company. Their web applications, for all the Windows/Office revenue thrown at them, are still less mature than their competitors.

If this is true, I wonder what kind of software would run on this thing.

Methinks CocoaTouch is a very nice framework to build apps that suit the hardware, but still allow incredible creativity.

If the Courier allows any ol' WPF/.NET app to execute, I can see the intended users being quite confused. OTOH, there are some interesting interaction flows in WPF (e.g. back/fwd nav) which, like CocoaTouch, could form the basis for consistent app behavior.

I wonder about the dual screen thing. It could be cool (two screens can yield a nice dual visual context), but I wonder about things like launching an app - which screen would it land on? can you move it from one to the other? can it span both screens?

If all the speculation around iSlate and Courier come to fruition, Jan 2010 is looking to be quite an exciting month.

It's Windows for Pen Computing versus Newton all over again.

With one important difference: Windows for Pen Computing was a real shipping product (although a laughably bad one) and this is 100% pure fantasy.

May I suggest there are other interesting differences:

First, neither company had successfully shipped anything like PDA software at that point. Today, Microsoft is has experience with their Tablet version of Windows and and Apple has experience with their wildly successful Touch/iPhone platform.

Second, it was enough for Microsoft to sow enough FUD to destroy the PDA market back then, they were still growing the desktop and notebook markets that they dominated. So their attitude to alternative markets was that if they couldn't dominate it, they should destroy it.

Today, they desperately need new markets to grow. Playing defense by destroying potential markets like tablets through FUD is not going to rekindle their stock growth. They need to develop new monopolies. So they need to win, not just produce a stalemate.

"Today, they desperately need new markets to grow. Playing defense by destroying potential markets like tablets through FUD is not going to rekindle their stock growth"

Unless there is a credible threat of someone else dominating that market. Then it's "dominate or destroy".

The tablet space looks a lot like what Apple encountered with the MP3 player market when they launched the iPod: several products, all of them sucking really bad. I say there is a huge threat of an Apple future in that area.

Link with product video - http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsof...

I hope they paint the reverse with black chalkboard paint cos you're gonna need it, the "black slate of death" coming to someone with more money than sense near you.

EDIT: I knew I would pay in karma :>

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