‘Microsoft’s Gates: I still believe in Tablet PC’

Bill Gates’ persistent cheerleading for the Tablet PC is good news for the e-book industry–even linux fans. No small number of high-tech journalists let business types do their trend-setting for them.

And the e-book angle? Obvious. Tablets are better than laptops for reading e-books–at least for many, including me. You don’t have to worry about the main part of the laptop getting between you and the screen. Meanwhile here are more Gates-related Tablet PC details via IDG News Service:

…he still believes in the form-factor and repeated a prediction that, with better hardware and software, it could still dominate over traditional laptop PCs…

Approximately 640,000 Tablet PCs were shipped in 2004 and this year shipments are expected to hit 1.2 million units, which corresponds to about 2 percent of the global portable PC market, according to a February report from IDC. “IDC continues to believe that tablet PC technology will become an integral part of future portable PC designs, but adoption of the technology will be slower than originally anticipated,” the report said.

“We need to keep investing, both in the hardware and software side, before it moves into the mainstream,” said Gates at a Tokyo news conference on Monday. “It’s not yet in the mainstream. I totally believe in the tablet.”

Gates praised Toshiba, with which the news conference was held. The two companies said they were broadening their relationship to include work on interactive video disc technology and future computing platforms based on the upcoming Windows Longhorn release, including Tablet PC.

“I think we see very good gains in the sale of tablet, particularly in the health-care area and the insurance area. What we need to do is get the form factor to the point where every student and every business person who goes to lots of meetings feels like the need that extra capability,” Gates said.

“There will be a substantial improvement in the tablet software as part of the Longhorn release and that’s just one of many areas we are working on with Toshiba and so I will again, without an exact date, predict that most portable machines will be tablets in the future and I would hope that over the next 3 to 5 years the software and hardware refinements will make that a reality.”

(Thanks to Mike Cane.)