Web Pads 9/15/2000:
Web pads latest device to attract the interest of IA manufacturers
Sep. 15, 2000 (Electronic Buyers News - CMP via COMTEX) -- Although there's considerable news about conventional notebooks, there's another class of devices that's getting a lot of attention in research and development labs in Japan, the United States, and elsewhere around the world.
Those devices are called Web pads, and they're the latest incarnation of the tablet PC of several years ago. There are substantial differences between yesterday's tablet PC and today's Web pad. To begin with, most don't run Microsoft Windows. In fact, the big score in this space may go to Linux and perhaps to Be Inc., Menlo Park, Calif., whose BeIA software architecture is catching the attention of U.S. and Taiwanese Internet-appliance manufacturers.
Most of the emerging Internet appliances are several cuts above current handhelds like the Palm family products or devices made by Handspring Inc., a Palm licensee. The market for portable tablets, most of which use 8.5-in. thin-film transistor (TFT) or 10.4-in. TFT screens, is still small-on the order of about $200 million, according to Sara Nelson, a vice president of marketing at Fujitsu PC Corp., Santa Clara, Calif.
Tablet PCs are gaining ground in markets such as medicine, construction, and other verticals. They've also caught the attention of Intel Corp., Santa Clara, which hopes to use this form factor as one of the platforms for its StrongArm family of processors.
But this form factor's real growth could come in the next two years, as nontraditional PC makers begin to explore consumer markets for these devices. As a consumer device, tablets have low build costs. They use a straightforward design that lacks hard-disk storage systems and will increasingly include wireless connectivity.
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