The other day I read through a really great post on Ultranauts that outlines 10 predictions for the future of the UMPC. As interesting as the whole post was number 10 raised my ire – but of course I suspect it was suppose to J
That’s fine – I’m always up for a good debate. Allow me to present my rebuttal… Homer style.
In case you missed it the heading for prediction number 10 was:
“In one mighty blow, the UMPC will displace the high-end PDA, the PMP and everyone’s favorite underdog, the TabletPC.”
Here are some of the points from the text of the prediction and my responses.
“I’d hate to be a TabletPC manufacturer right now (or worse, a TabletPC blog). It must feel a bit like being in a guillotine, watching your own head drop into the basket.”
Er – no. I don’t see the UMPC as a threat because they are tablets. I often say that tablets are a superset of laptops. UMPCs are a bit different – on the software side of it they are a superset of the Tablet PC OS because they have things like dial keys that Tablets lack. On the hardware side of it, however, the UMPC is a subset of the Tablet PC. They have smaller screens, lack an active digitiser and because of the constraints of the platform specification will always lag behind other mobile devices on points like battery life (because they need to weigh 2 pounds or less) screen resolution and integrated peripherals (such as optical drives). By no means am I saying that everyone needs these – just that not everyone can live without them.
“TabletPCs will go completely niche and only serve very specific vertical applications. Most mainstream Tablet SKUs will disappear from the catalogs by 2007.”
I disagree. Tablets will hold a place in the mobile device continuum, as will Laptops and UMPCs. However the term Tablet PC may well fade. Rob Bushway uses the term “Tablet as a Feature” and James Kendrick talks about devices that are “Ink Enabled”. Whichever term wins out in the end as the lines between laptop, tablet and UMPC blur I believe the term Tablet PC may be used less frequently. That is not the same thing as tablets disappearing.
Further Thoughts
· What market are we talking about here? UMPCs will not dominate the business market any time soon. Typically the business day lasts 8 hours or so. Right now initial reports put UMPC battery life about 6 hours short of that. The consumer market may well be a different story.
· Tablets may lose some people to UMPCs, but they are gaining users from the laptop market at a faster rate and as such will continue to gain market share.
· In working with business users I frequently see resistance to tablets from laptop users because they perceive tablets to underpowered, lacking an integrated optical drive and constrained to screen sizes smaller than 15”. I can put forward a tablet to shatter any and all of those perceptions. Show me one UMPC that can shatter one.
· The world is full of a vastly diverse range of users with a vastly diverse needs. No one platform can meet all of those needs. The world is big enough for laptops, tablets, UMPCs, PMPs, PDAs and more.
I think I’ll start a series of posts that compare the relative merits of different types of devices and outlines possible use cases for each. Stay tuned.