I agree with a comment posted here by Ed Strong that the Tablet PC is still in an introductory phase. People are still learning about Tablet PCs.
As a thought experiment, sometimes I’ve wondered what it would have been like if for the first six months of the “launch,” Tablet PCs were only sold to developers/MSDN/large corporate early adopter programs instead. Tablet PCs could have been purchased through regular distributor channels, but you wouldn’t have seen them at Frys, Best Buy, or CompUSA for the first phase.
Acer was building units for Microsoft early on, after all. Why not add an extra 500 to a run and sell them through TechData–to qualified MSDN developers? I bet it would have paid off.
What might the benefits have been with getting Tablet PCs into the hands of developers earlier? More software. A stronger developer foundation. More technical feedback for updates to the Tablet PC OS.
It’s interesting to think through how a pre-launch release like this would have impacted the Tablet PC market once it went public.
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