Joe Wilcox of JupiterMedia shares his concerns about missing the Back to School market now that Service Pack 2 is delayed–which includes significant improvements for the Tablet PC.
“The longer Microsoft takes delivering SP2 the more likely that the software vendor and its Tablet PC manufacturer makers will miss, yet again, the back-to-school buying season.”
It takes time to get products out through the channels and even if Microsoft releases SP2 to manufacturing by mid summer, it’ll be unlikely that products make it to store shelves by August. And, of course, this says nothing about training the channel either. Will sales reps in Best Buy or CompUsa even notice the amazing changes to Tablets?
It looks like it’s shaping up to be a tough transition, so this is when the marketing folks get to earn their wings.
Joe Wilcox makes a few suggestions: provide students with OneNote SP1, MSN Messenger and other software on free discs. (Or on sites, such as TabletPCPost, I’d say). Not bad. But I’d go further.
One idea I’ve mentioned here before is to erase the price difference between Tablets and notebooks. Give a $300 rebate to all students, faculty, academic staff members, or parents of students that purchase a Tablet PC by September 1. Sound too open ended? OK. Limit it to all incoming college freshman and give $600. And don’t forget, college orientations are a last chance to get to this audience before they buy their computers.
Another bold idea is to give Tablets away–by the hundreds. This is how you qualify: You have to blog about how you’d use a Tablet if you got one. From the list of daily submitted blogs, Microsoft would pull let’s say at least one blogger each day–with a compelling story–and give the winner a Tablet. For added juice, let Bill Gates and/or Steve Ballmer pick the daily winner (from a short list, of course). But this wouldn’t be all. Simultaneously, allow end users to read from the submitted blog entries and vote on who they think should get a Tablet. The blogger with the highest number of votes each day gets a Tablet too.
The Tablet team already has some excellent campus programs in motion here and here, but I’d like to see more. I’d like to see something that gets people talking–talking about what they’d do with a Tablet.
I agree. The more people writing and talking about the usage of the Tablet PC will more likely drive people to buy them. The iPod went in this direction. I’d have never bought one if it wasn’t for the fact my students talked about it constantly and then I read some great reviews. I was curious and just “had” to have one … bloggers are influential in this manner.
“bloggers are influential”. True. Blogs are a part of essential marketing today.
I think tablet PCs are still a long way off from
mass adoption because not one store I’ve looked
at in San Diego has a working Tablet PC display.
I’ve tried Best Buy, Fry’s, Compusa, and Circuit
City, all to no avail.
I think the Tablet PC manufacturers need to set
up demo kiosks in the big stores complete with
three or four tablet PCs per kiosk. The pens
need to be tethered with thin steel cables or some other means to keep them from
disappearing.
Kiosks are coming for large retail operations.
Of course, regional resellers and VARs may have inventory too.