One of the quietly exciting parts of the Tablet PC get together (and Comdex for that matter) was meeting with ODMs/OEMs/big companies without Tablet PCs yet. They are interested–even if you’ve heard some pretty negative sounding comments in the trade press attributed to them.
Just read Michael Dell’s recent Comdex comments in an interview he had with CNet:
Q: How do you decide at what point to enter a market, such as tablet PCs?
Dell: It’s a combination of factors. We look at our bandwidth, how much we can reasonably expect to do. We may not be ready to take on additional things. Then we look at adjacent markets. It’s an allocation of resources and strategic priorities. There are plenty of markets we won’t go in. We have some partners we work with on tablet PCs, but it’s thousands of units as opposed to tens or hundreds of thousands. The gestation period is going to be longer.
Sure enough, to him it’s just a question of when. He’s waiting for the market to evolve. I bet his best customers aren’t clamoring for Tablet PCs right now and he figures Dell can switch at any time when they eventually want them. He could be right. Or he could be giving an opening to others, such as Legend or other self-branding ODMs/OEMs.
I guess it depends on how easy it would be to switch over. It may be trivial, if many Tablet PC customers turn out to be Dell’s existing customers. Or maybe it could be a penalizing retraining issue. Or possibly it’ll be an availability issue. We’ll have to see 🙂
I’m sure these companies are watching each other more than simply the eager early adopters. When Dell goes full speed into Tablet PCs, probably so too will IBM or vice versa. The remaining big players may all jump in at once. That’s the way of the business world.
So what would make one of these companies make the effort? From a rational standpoint it’ll be industry sales levels. However, from a management standpoint it’ll very likely be a potential customer of theirs that needs them. Maybe a massive consulting company that they’ve always coveted but never had needs to replace their aging systems and some new Tablet PC application fits the bill perfectly. So to get this new customer, let’s say IBM needs a Tablet PC. Maybe you can give away two or three big customers this way to your competition, but after awhile the competitive juices kick in or the quest for leadership spurs a re-org and new direction.
No one can tell the future. But these companies are paying attention to the trends today. At the Tablet PC get together I know individuals from two non-Tablet PC companies were drilling Lora on her experiences in the Tablet PC channel and she shared her thoughts with others on and off the Comdex floor too. Will this lead to any particular company launching a Tablet PC? Probably not. But it gives inside employees a little more comfort in accepting the decision when it’s made. As Michael Dell suggests: It’s a matter of when.