It seems that in yesterday's WSJ the story was that HP and other companies that are in the business of Tablet PC's and other Tablet like devices are working furiously on ways to compete with the announced Apple iPad. HP executives will meet next week with Taiwan manufacturing partners to see if they can get a device that sells for less than $629. The magic 629 is what the iPad with a 3G connection will sell for, so its important to beat that price to increase market share.
In addition to HP, the article says Sony, Acer, and Dell are also all looking at ways to profit or capitalize on the soon to be exploding "slate" market.
Interesting enough, HP will actually call theirs a "slate" which IMO is what Apple should have grabbed, but what do I know about marketing anyway?
Of course the good news for all of us is that this will start a "category war" as companies jockey for a piece of the slate market. If they can get the input system to really work I can see these devices taking off and not just because of Apple. The idea of a mobile device that fits between the horsepower of a phone and laptop is intriguing to me and I think it will catch on, but it may be a bit slower in adoption than the iPod.
My prediction is that 10 years from now those of us who carry laptops around constantly will be carrying slates and laughing about laptops the way we laugh about "bag phones" today.
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