Rob Bushway comments on my post about Intel leading the Tablet market: “…we had wireless and decent battery before centrino..Centrino just made the experience better.”
Yep. Intel has hit the market just right. It was ready for WiFi/better mobility–hence the terrific notebook sales.
The Tablet goes even further, yes. For example, you can readily use a Tablet while standing up.
And in terms of ink, it’s the main reason I got involved with the Tablet PC. I agree that ink/pen-enabled apps are the key to the widespread success of the Tablet–but with one caveat–assuming that the hardware is sufficient–scratch that–really good.
Now am I saying that people are purchasing Tablets because of Centrino? No. I’m saying that Intel has enabled the mainstream computer mobility market. It’s been a very successful campaign–although it had a few false starts.
What I’ve been wondering about is: What if the Centrino had never come out? Yes, there would be WiFi, 2-4 hr battery life, and the like. However, I doubt that the Tablet would have picked up in sales this past year much at all–even with SP2, GoBinder, xThink, TEO2. Why? Because the Centrino made the Tablet (especially convertibles) a great notebook. Just a hunch.
What do you think? Have I been swayed by the Intel marketing machine? After all, in earlier posts I’ve argued that the success of the Tablet mainly depends on the software.
What I’m thinking now is that as a developer paying attention and staying aligned with Intel is probably a good move 
. Intel has gotten ahead of markets before–such as the endless advocating of video email–but I think their mobility story is well timed and spot on.
Down the road, as people are even more connected while using their Intel WiMAX-enabled, multi-core Tablets what does this mean for developers? This is where I’m going with all of this. Let’s assume that the next generation of mobile chipset technology is also well received. Applications that maybe were so-so practical today may come into their own at this time. Will these be pen-perfect applications with recognizers that can leverage the multi-core processors? Or maybe collaboration apps that provide communication transparency over WiMAX? Seemless VoIP? Remote presence? Always-connected immersive games? Hmm.
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You do have some good points, but I honestly think its more sofware than centrino, although centrino certainly helped a tremendous amount with battery and wireless performance. Thinking back to when I used a TC1000 with the transmetta processor, within 6 months I gave up on the TC1000 due to performance – no amount of software could have kept me with it. However, I tried the M1200 and loved it – no centrino, peformance was decent. I would have been happy.
I honestly think that had centrino not come along, we would have still had decent tablet pc sales. Centrino has just made it the experience that much better. As Loren points out though, we need to be paying attention to Intel and staying aligned with them.
Rob, yeah, I wonder what the Tablet sales would have been last year compared to the previous year without the benefits and marketing (to consumers and OEMs) of the Centrino platform?
Of course, I’m still a strong advocate of ink-enabled software and the added flexibility of the pen and Tablet platform, but sometimes I wonder if we’re all really that smart seeing the possibilities. Maybe the success is due to other things.
Maybe the success? One million units worldwide, of which seemingly 90% are verticals or ruggeds, and a large percentage (at least to my perception) are 1st gen’s rotting away, somewhere. Centrino, software, whatever has gotten it “here”, isn’t enough. Most still aren’t aware of Tablets, name awareness is almost nil.
Evolution of the laptop? Sounds like Darwin needs God to move things along. They said in 5 years, everyone will be using Tablets, maybe with Longhorn still in the cards, but a poorly metric’ed ‘one million’ isn’t anything to shout about, not when you look at the big picture, a tiny sliver percentage of the mobile computing market.
So I take a differing view, it’s not Centrino vs. Software, it’s that both are losers in regardless to Tablets. Centrino is all aboutr the laptop, only a sidelight in things Tablet.
PS – What up with that memory leak bug that was supposed to be fixed “ASAP”, hrrmph. Had people ask again.
err, regards, tho I guess “regardless” could work too.
Chris: I’d like to see a breakdown of the Tablet market like you’ve mentioned. I’d also like to see how much Tablet-specific software these customers are purchasing. If they don’t need much, then this would reinforce the notion that it’s the platform they’re buying–or enough tools are bundled as is. If they are purchasing Tablet-enabled software, is it for vertical apps, horizontal, or custom development. The market is mature enough to start seeing trends here.
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