The first ever tablet PC prototypes, built by Acer, Fujitsu, Compaq and Toshiba, were shown by Bill Gates at the 2001 COMDEX show. Giving his keynote speech at the show, Gates predicted that the Tablet PC would become the most popular form of the PC sold in America within five years.
The device, which later became the Windows XP tablet edition, promised, on the face of it, many of the same things as the iPad. The Windows XP tablet edition was to include a wealth of partner applications, including CAD software, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and support for handwritten messaging.
Microsoft laboured under the belief that the revolution in tablet computing was just around the corner, spending $400m on building the Tablet PC platform. There were some successes - the device has been adopted in certain vertical niches, such as healthcare and education.
For consumers though, the Microsoft XP Tablet Edition devices were too expensive, and the principal benefit of Tablet Computing at the time, handwriting recognition, was not considered essential.
Why is the iPad likely to be more of a success with consumers? One obvious point is the price. Microsoft went to market with the tablet PC at $2,200, slashing the price by $700 within 18 months. The most inexpensive version of the iPad will retail at $499.
A second point is that smartphones and mobile internet devices such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, or Android-powered devices have acted as training wheels for the iPad. These devices play an important role, as they have helped in consumer understanding of the technology. The touch metaphor is now fairly standard.
We should not overstate this point though. While the likes of the iPod Touch, the iPhone, (even the iPod classic) have prepared us for a full tablet experience through assisting our understanding of the touch metaphor, it would be a mistake to believe that the iPad will behave in the exact same way as these devices.
Touch devices eventually became app-centric mobile computers. Mobile apps are an efficient model for devices which are 3.5inches precisely because they never make you feel like you are using a limited function device, or one with intermittent connectivity.
The app-centric model is unlikely to persist though - the killer app of the iPad is not the app, it's the touchable web. With the touchable web, Apple have a proposition which is easier to understand, and more widely demanded than handwriting recognition.
The web itself has become richer - it is so much part of our converged, digital lives that we don't really think about it. We expect rich multimedia content to be delivered on demand. We expect our friends at our fingertips. More of our digital content has moved off our machines and on to the web. This was not the case when Microsoft released the Windows XP tablet edition.
We are now accustomed to using the web in a different way too - on the sofa, in the cafe reading books, checking the news, sharing photos with friends. We are used to experiencing this web wirelessly.
As consumers, we are currently digesting this content through laptop computers. A flat, unobtrusive device offers a new way to experience this content, and does not require a fundamental re-imagining of the content delivery as handwriting recognition did.
I truly believe that we will begin to see the web adapt itself to touch devices. While there is a huge opportunity for applications, especially games, the more interesting opportunity is for services interested in tablets to have touchable websites in their product roadmaps.
With chip designer ARM anticipating over 50 tablet devices this year, the web will be the only scalable solution to reach all of them.
The use case is there - although developers and content producers are right to be sceptical after many false dawns, we can now get ready, (finally) for the year of the tablet.
Prashant Agarwal, MD of Fjord NYC
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