Sigh. While I may toy with the inverse of some statements, it can be annoying when certain myths are restated over and over again and they just don't go away. Luckily Loren does a much better job analyzing the myth in his latest post.

The "Tablet isn't for consumers" story is a myth. Tell it to the students using Tablets. Tell it to the start ups that leverage the flexibility of the Tablet in their highly fluid states. Tell it to the doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, and on and on, that purchased a Tablet out of their own pocket--and not as part of an IT deployment strategy--because they saw it could help them. Tell it to the teacher surfing the Net on the couch. Tell it to the 750 developers that are working on Tablet-enabled products like those on TabletPCPost. Tell us Tablet users that we don't exist and you're sure to get a response. Because yes, Mark, we do exist. If you have any doubts, check the user blogs (Tabula PC, TheTabletPCsWeblog), or the Tablet news sites (TabletPC2, WhatIsNew, TabletPCTalk), or the forums (TabletPCBuzz, TabletQuestions).

Now, let's see how he starts out his post and leads all of us to see that the Tablet PC is for consumers and businesses.

Interestingly, the eChannelLine's title, "Tablet PC hasn't been successful," is more ominous sounding than the actual report seems to be. The report seems to indicate that sales were OK in vertical markets and are likely to rise. And, in fact, the Tablet market is approaching the sale of its 1,000,000th unit. Not bad for a startup. So why the disconnect? I think many are expecting more. And the last paragraph in this article sums it up:

"...the report notes, if the Tablet is going to make it anywhere, it will have to be in the commercial market. To date, there has been little consumer interest in the Tablet, and that, the report says, is not likely to change."

Actually, I think the consumer interest is there. The lackluster commercial sales in my book are more indicative of the Tablet marketing strategy employed to date than the Tablet itself. You have to get the word out first. You have to communicate with the customer. You have to communicate with those that are going to sell the Tablets.

In fact, what's frustrating to me is that in this case, the article is published at a site visited by over 100,000 VARS, system builders, and the like. Think of it. These are the people that would sell and deploy Tablets. But I bet most aren't. They've probably never used a Tablet themselves or if they have it's been for five minutes trying out the recognizer in Journal. They don't know how or why customers would use a Tablet. Instead, they read headlines like this one on eChannelLine. Expecting the customers to pull the market along is inefficient.

The myth of consumer power

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Layne P. Heiny / Administrator for Tux Reports Network

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