With Electronics Show Over, Tablet PCs Try Live Up To Hype

Of all the hype generated by the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, few products generated more headlines and heat than tablet PCs. Personal-computer industry officials showed off their newest table wares to varying degrees of excitement. But the main question facing any company looking to get into the tablet-PC market is whether the hype coming out of CES will amount to acceptance among consumers and translate into real sales. It's an issue that has dogged tablet PCs for years.

"Every couple of years it seems like everybody tried something new with tablets," said J.P. Gownder, vice president at Forrester Research. "So, why is there so much interest now?" Analysts say that while it is too early to tell how much traction tablets will gain among potential buyers, the state of technology is such that there might finally be the right mix of applications, hardware and mobility available to make tablet PCs more than just a niche device in a market already crowded with gadgets designed to deal with almost any computing need a person may have. Gownder estimates that devices that could be considered tablet PCs date back to the Toshiba Dynapad, released in 1992. The latest era of tablets can be traced to late 2002, when Microsoft released the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system.

While tablet PCs have found some market niches such as medical, government and military applications, other devices -- smart phones, digital music players, netbooks and, most recently, e-book readers -- have take precedence among mainstream consumers, effectively turning the tablet into a novelty rather than a technological necessity. That could be about to change, as a combination of better applications and mobility has made tablet PCs more feasible, according to Stephen Baker of NPD Group.