Seriously…another tablet?
At CES this year there were nearly 100 tablets. Let’s step back and let that sink in…100 tablets!?! That’s incredible to the point of being absurd. We’re either looking at a genuine revolution or a gigantic flash in the pan. I personally feel it’s a little bit of both. Touch screens are the new black. Although the tablet market is taking off I think we’re going to see more of an incorporation of touch screen capability into NoteBooks (think new MacBook Air). For me the obvious question is “what does this mean for the Cloud?”
Within the next year and a half a tablet without a wireless or 3G connection will be a non-starter. I also think SD cards for tablets will soon be a non-starter. Cloud storage offerings in the Cloud are maturing quite rapidly. If they continue to move at the current page there’s no reason you’ll need to transfer files back and forth on some type of storage disk. Additionally, tablet based programs that run from the Cloud are quickly becoming popular. While I do not expect you’ll see versions nearly as robust as anything currently available on a desktop computer there will be iterations.
Let me be abundantly clear. I do not think that tablets are replacing the desktop computer just yet. I think, however, that tablets are causing a boom in development work for touch screen devices and Cloud based storage. These new apps and programs are Cloud based and gesture oriented. The push to the Cloud is happening at a consumer level by people who don’t even know they’re in the Cloud.