Speaking at the Worldwide Partners Conference in Seattle, Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer revealed this week that his company is finally ready to step on the gas and get serious about the scarcity of competition in the tablet marketplace.
Saying Microsoft is poised to bring some “hardcore” attention to the long awaited project, Ballmer indicated that Microsoft will soon roll out a veritable smorgasbord of Windows 7-based slate computers.
Without question, Microsoft has designs on taking down the iPad as the preeminent consumer choice in the tablet marketplace. Ballmer, however, maintains that a Microsoft tablet will present consumers with far more choices and opportunities than anything presently available or in the works.
“We want to give you a great device, a consumer oriented device, but a device that fits and is manageable with today’s enterprise IT solutions… This is a terribly important area for us. It’s certainly an area where—how do I say it?—we feel all of the energy and vigor and push that we have ever felt to innovate, to drive hard, to compete,” Ballmer said.
With millions of iPads already sold and in use around the world, Microsoft will have its hands full trying to play catch up. But if Ballmer and crew manage to successfully tweak some of the Apple tablet’s shortcomings with their own offering and possibly develop a rival mobile ad platform to combat iAd, there’s no telling just how lucrative Microsoft’s foray into the tablet arena could ultimately prove.
