Peter and Scoble respond to a recent article that Tablet PC sales slumped in Q2.
Is the Tablet PC team sitting tight until the tide comes back and lifts all ships? I don't think so--although I've mentioned here and elsewhere that I've been surprised that they haven't done more.
Here's an inventory of what I can recall of some of the promotional efforts the Tablet PC team has made over the last 8 months (in no particular order):
1. Monthly online chats
2. Communicate through MVP program
3. tabletpc.com
4. Coop print ads
5. tabletpcdeveloper.com (although I'm not quite sure who or how it is run)
6. Training: there was an ISV or MVP Tablet PC training program of some kind up at Redmond recently (although again I'm not too sure what it was)
7. Airport kiosks
8. Education liason of some kind making the rounds (I saw it mentioned in a recent press article, but again I'm not too clear on what the mission is here: to find potential power toys, promote ink research, Tablet PC use in schools, etc)
9. Retail coop displays for the Tablet PC
10. Indirect/suggestive TV ad campaign--the TV commercials show ink being drawn over the video although no explicit mention is made of the Tablet PC
11. Bill Gates mentions the Tablet PC in a lot of his presentations and he's been photographed with one from time to time
12. Hired Scoble: indirect Tablet PC weblogging evangelist
13. Several Tablet PC giveaways
14. One-day Tablet PC loaners for CEOs at a Redmond conference
15. A sneak peak demo at a Pocket PC user group meeting of the Tablet PC--before the Tablet PC launch
16. Tablet PC launch events
17. Free power toys
18. Worked with Leszynski and others to develop sample apps for the Tablet PC
19. An intro to the Tablet PC in a .NET Show
I guess it's interesting to see what I can recall. I'm sure there's more. Where else have you heard or seen the Tablet PC promoted?
Posted by Loren at July 30, 2003 02:25 PMIt may seem coutner-intuitive to some but Microsoft can do one thing the ego of the CEO and founder may not allow. The company can embrace other operating systems for the tablet pc. Work with developers to put Linux on the units. Some people might roll their eyes and fold their arms, but opening up the hardware may help spur sales. It certainly wouldn't hurt for a company with "older" units to move them by offering the unit with Linux. It would be a good PR move, too. If it didn't work out in the number of sales then MS could use that as a PR move too. Guess that would be a true win-win for them ;)
Posted by: LPH on July 30, 2003 03:30 PMProbably not. The question is how does this help their revenue?
I'd like to see MS open up the platform/Tablet PC applications from a developer standpoint too. I'm not holding my breath though.
MS is all about C# now and interfaces to and from C# (and VB for that matter). Actually, I think that C# has muddled the developer story for the Tablet PC. But it means that if Microsoft ever "opens" up Journal, for instance, it'll probably be as managed objects rather than as bits and bytes. Oh well. Someone will eventually figure it out.
Posted by: Loren on July 30, 2003 06:09 PMLPH, I can appreciate the sentiment, but it really makes no sense for Microsoft to do anything like that. Right now there's nothing stopping anyone from running Linux on a Tablet PC. I don't think there are any secrets in the hardware - usb ports, Wacom tablets, all stuff that there's already Linux drivers for. I haven't tried to get Linux working on mine, but I see no reason it wouldn't. (Wasn't there even a Slashdot story about a Tablet PC oriented distribution last week sometime?)
No, the real thing for Microsoft on the Tablet PC right now is their application(s) (is OneNote or whatever even out? - Journal is all I really use) and their handwriting recognition. If Microsoft won't port Office to Linux I have no idea why they would port these two things.
To be honest - no one I know feels they can justify the cost no matter how nice it is. At the current prices for Tablets, the OS license probably isn't a big enough factor in costs to modify purchasing behavior. What might be the problem right now is that the early adaptors have all snatched up their units, and the general buying public has grown too addicted to low cost computers to jump on the bandwagon. (Most non-developers I know buy cheap desktops [unless they're gamers] and purchase their old laptops off Ebay.)
I couldn't find the article about the Tablet distribution, but here's someone at MIT who got Debian running on an Acer Tablet PC: http://neon.lcs.mit.edu/tm100/ .