Microsoft tablet to be available this holiday season

Microsoft Windows tablet PC

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that they will launch a Microsoft Windows tablet PC this holiday season to enter the competitive market led by Apple’s iPad.

“You’ll see new slates with Windows on them. You’ll see them this Christmas,” he told an audience at the London School of Economics on Tuesday.

The company has been so far unable to make inroads into the crowded smartphone market and has been slow to match the iPad despite high sales of its Windows 7 operating system.

Up to 10 million tablet PCs will be bought by consumers in 2010, according to IT research company Gartner.

Apple’s iPad sold 3.3 million units in the first quarter of this year alone, with an average selling rate of 4.5 million units every quarter, becoming the fastest-selling electronics device in history.

But Microsoft has not taken full advantage of the growing demand for the gadgets.

It had an innovative dual-screen tablet PC called Courier but abandoned it later as the iPad was released.

Microsoft also planned to launch the HP Slate which Ballmer introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. But commercial launch of that model did not push through as HP concentrated on its purchase of Palm and its own mobile operating system called WebOS.

The company confirmed that it will launch its Windows 7 operating system on October 11, but its CEO admits that their OS is not fully optimized for tablet PCs.

“We’re not going to do a major revamp of Windows 7 for slate applications; that will come in the next version (Windows 8),” Ballmer said.

Posted by Melanie Mendoza on Wednesday October 06 2010, 9:09 AM EST. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Shopping. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0