Will Apple steal the tablet marketplace?

Rumors in the press about an Apple tablet computer are rife, and the hype about that tablet and no others are making some people wonder if Apple is going steal both the limelight and the market.

There have been announcements from a few other manufacturers about new tablet-like computers, such as Microsoft and Samsung, but none of them have gotten anywhere near the amount of ink as the as-yet-invisible Apple iTablet, or iSlate, or whatever the current batch of rumors is calling it. That has some people asking if everyone else is just abandoning this playing field to Apple, such as this column on CNET. That might not actually be the most important question to ask, though it is interesting.

The most important question may be whether or not there is really a tablet computer market to dominate. These sort of devices have been tried before, of course, and never really gotten very far. Then again, those previous devices were very nerd-like and not at all sexy. They were comparatively bulky and heavy and they did not do much. The fact is, pretty much everything that they were able to do can be done today by a fairly basic (non-smart) cell phone. It’s going to take a lot more to sell a tablet in 2010. The form factor is going to be a little odd (about 10” diagonal, at least), making it difficult to carry around for some people, even if there were no other barriers.

But the thought of a tablet a la the iPhone or the iPod Touch is a bit of a different story. Razor thin, sexy in the extreme, with all of the qualities of those other Apple devices except the phone (which should be included, with a Bluetooth headset, to make the package complete). Everyone wants to carry just one device, not several. The world is inching closer to a real personal computer in a very small space, and the Apple tablet could be the next step up from the iPhone in that department.

With improvements in small processors and flash memory, we are very nearly into the realm of a real PC that will fit in your pocket. There is still the problem of input, which Apple is expected to solve with a touchscreen and that of output, which Apple is expected to solve with a bit more display real estate and better resolution. Those factors will make the tablet bigger, and all of that in one tiny sexy device will insure that there is a marketplace. And, yes, everyone but Apple may be missing it, at least for now.

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• Apple Tablet rumors now verge on the surreal
• iSlate rumored to be the name of the mythical Apple Tablet