News

Tablet PC hits amazing £800 price point at London launch

Few surprises, perhaps, on the Tablet technology; but the market was amazed to see what price the devices can be made for, when educational specialist RM produced a "schools-only" version selling for £799.

The RM device is one of five shown at the launch in Waterloo's wide-screen iMax cinema this afternoon; and it's one of the keyboardless designs. There is a higher-spec version of the RM slate for teachers - that includes fingerprint authentication.

Canalys analyst Andy Buss said: "The prices aren't as low as we expected. The exception is the RM educational version, but that is a very bare-bones model, no keyboard. The others are disappointing."

Buss also regretted Microsoft's failure to update the design to include Bluetooth. "You'd have thought, having just launched the Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, it would be possible to connect htem up without fuss to Microsoft's latest hardware ... but no. As usual, we'll have to wait for version three, I suppose, and probably the launch of Intel's Banias chip set later this year, for the real thing."

Other hardware was shown by Toshiba (the largest-screen model at over 12 inch) Acer, Compaq and Fujitsu - and at the exhibition area, Viewsonic and other designs were also on view.

Most interesting, perhaps, were the sample software applications which Microsoft partners demonstrated. There was a new Corell graphics package, Grafigo - graphics on the go - which is capable of turning sketch scribbles into recogniseable circles, squares and the like. There was a hospital application, from iSoft - Lorenzo - which helps doctors make notes on the slate. There was also a retail merchandising product - fully database driven- to enable creation of display merchandising stands and to place them on shop floors - and a field engineering management package from Accenture, Field Force Enablement.

Wild projections of sales ranged up as high as 15-20% of PC sales in 2003.

Our official Mobile Campaign prediction; tablets will account for around 2-3% of PC sales next year, mostly into niche areas where people have to stand up, or where people need to input graphic sketches. The format will probably take off in 2004, when wireless is more widespread.