Tablet ennui: Microsoft, Dell poo-poo iPad, tablets

Two stories making the Internet rounds today reveal Microsoft's and Dell's approach to the tablet category, which appears to be a strategy of downplaying Apple's huge market lead and poo-pooing the tablet as a form factor.

As Homer Simpson would say: "D'oh!"

Dell's global head of marketing for large enterprises told CIO that the iPad would ultimately fail in the enterprise. Commenters on the site suggested that the Dell executive was "smoking" something or "DELLusional."

Meantime, Microsoft's global chief research and strategy executive mused that tablets might be a flash in the pan -- even as his company struggles to come up with an iPad competitor. He believes the smartphone will emerge as the primary mobile and portable computing device, according to this report in the Sydney Morning Herald. Really, Microsoft? How about those 700,000 downloads of the Citrix application for the iPad? That's the beginning of a wave of professionals accessing their PCs through a tablet application -- and it's happening on an iPad.

Personally, I think the tablet is here to stay. And Apple is locking in millions of customers into their ecosystem at a very fast rate.