Tablets aren't ready for prime time

THESE NEW-FANGLED tablet computers are not ready for the enterprise, said Intel's chief as he opened its IDF 2010 show in San Francisco.

In his opening keynote address, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that although tablet computers are an important new factor in the computing market they will not have an impact in the corporate world for another two years.

“The tablet form factor is evolving and being additive to the computing sphere,” he said. “But it's a content consumption device, and is likely to stay that way because of I/O limitations.”

He said that there was considerable overlap between smartphone use and tablets, pointing out that large amounts of data are ported between to the two platforms. In addition enterprises were showing few indications of support for tablet computing.

However, analysts have disputed this assessment of the platform.

“It's not that the tablet isn't ready for enterprise,” Jon Collins, managing director of analyst house Freeform Dynamics said. “It's that enterprise isn't ready for the tablet.”

He pointed out that Microsoft had tried to push tablets as part of its Windows everywhere strategy, for perfectly understandable reasons, at the start of the decade. However, enterprise systems were still lagging.

Plenty of managers used tablets he said, but lacked the infrastructure to support their hardware choices. µ

For more Intel Developer Forum coverage, visit our dedicated IDF blog, where you can see Sandy Bridge images and keep up with live second by second updates from the keynotes as they happen.