Once you sell on price alone, you have no where to go but down!
Which, if you stop to think about it rationally is precisely why HP have offered this as a temporary discount. A temporary discount doesn't permanently affect pricing power the way that a drastically reduced RRP would. Surely you can see that just from your own experience shopping for groceries?
Does HP have the best product in the market? Certainly not. But their retail strategy is entirely reasonable given what they do have. Will it succeed in establishing the Touchpad? Probably not, but that's not the fault of the retail marketeers, that's the fault of the product developers.
Why? Because the OS has little to do with a devices success when in a competitive market. Under those conditions apps are what makes a platform stale or not. As long as you get fresh useful apps the platform is not stale.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Buck
Wow, any of you guys even used the TouchPad? It's actually pretty good for their first version/attempt. Go ahead, find one and try it. I did out of curiosity and liked it a lot! If only they had a way to switch between keyboard layouts and localization support, but they don't go after anything but the states right now.
The problem with iOS is that it's STALE. Come on, it's been 4 years already, aren't you all bored with the same old that barely even changes? The main attraction of webOS is the attention to detail and because of that there's a huge potential.
While I agree that WebOS has it's good points it won't compete with iOS anytime soon. Again the issue is apps.
Quote:
Most of these things usually happen because of a couple very devoted folks within the company that have a vision and push things forward, putting love in what they do. I certainly can't say the same thing about Android which is about as lifeless and Windows-like in its ways as it can be. webOS "sees" where it should go, Android on the other hand is blindly stumbling in the dark.
I resist Android simply because of it's association with Google. However it is a mess and I really don't think anybody at Google can see beyond the platform as a advertising and spying mechanism. Even if Android got it's act together I couldn't recommend it to anybody.
Frankly my initiation into iOS devices was on an iPhone 3G which was frankly underpowered. IPhone 4 and my iPad are completely different experiences. Especially when you take into consideration the new iOS versions and the endless apps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by addicted44
EXACTLY!
iOS did have stale parts, and with each release, Apple has addressed them (the last release finally fixing the awful notification system).
There is very little that is "stale" now. However, I do believe the next step Apple needs to take is a "DashBoard" for iOS. They have taken a small step towards this with the weather app, etc on the notification screen, but they need to open it to 3rd party devs.
Also, they now need better inter-app communication. That is another part that is stale.
It is also going to be very difficult for Apple to address and keep their security model. Frankly I'd rather that they keep iOS secure.
Quote:
Its really sad when people complain about iOS being stale, and then point out the grid of icons, which means they are completely missing the point of iOS, which is that it serves as a vehicle to deliver great apps, which can convert your 3" device, or your 10" device into any possible product.
Exactly. People need to reread the above again and again to they get it. IPad or iOS success is all about apps.
Which, if you stop to think about it rationally is precisely why HP have offered this as a temporary discount. A temporary discount doesn't permanently affect pricing power the way that a drastically reduced RRP would. Surely you can see that just from your own experience shopping for groceries?
Does HP have the best product in the market? Certainly not. But their retail strategy is entirely reasonable given what they do have. Will it succeed in establishing the Touchpad? Probably not, but that's not the fault of the retail marketeers, that's the fault of the product developers.
I agree that HP can only sell what they have in the wagon... or nothing.
I suspect they have a backlog of product that isn't selling. I do not think that reducing the price will goose the sales enough to solve their backlog problem.
I checked and the TouchPad went on sale July 1 -- a few days over 1 month ago.
This link shows that HP has contracted 400,000-450,000 per month.
If that is correct, then, HP and its resellers are, likely, sitting on somewhere around 350,000-400,000 unsold units (given the long time HP took to bring the TouchPad to market). And, there's another 400,000 coming...
When the iPad 2 was announced, like Sammy, HP should have gone back to the drawing board -- to, at the very least, bring their hardware into competition.
The big problem, as I see it, is lack of apps and developers! Without them, who will buy a TouchPad? Why?
What they could have done (and still could do):
1) cancel manufacturing of the current model -- pay whatever contract penalties necessary.
2) cancel/postpone the 7-inch model -- pay whatever contract penalties necessary.
3) begin work on a follow-on with the same form factor -- based on assumptions of what iPads will be when the follow-on is ready.
4) contract (pay) major developers to commit to write programs for the TouchPad and its follow-on
5) seed these developers with as many current TouchPads as they need and whatever assistance they need.
6) get the developers to announce their apps which are coming to the TouchPad and when
7) reduce the price of the TouchPad $100 plus $100 worth of free apps/content as they become available
8) announce publicly that HP is in this game for the long haul -- and that they are taking these steps to assure their position in the marketplace.
9) build a follow-on replacement that is as hardware-competitive with the iPad as possible -- even if they must accept low profits until they get a foothold in the market
The TouchPad should be easier to develop for than Android because of a single form factor and no fragmentation or fear of litigation.
That's what i"d do -- and be damned quick about it!
Which, if you stop to think about it rationally is precisely why HP have offered this as a temporary discount. A temporary discount doesn't permanently affect pricing power the way that a drastically reduced RRP would. Surely you can see that just from your own experience shopping for groceries?
That's not entirely true.
A temporary discount can most certainly lead to permanent reduction in pricing power - particularly if the discount is followed by other discounts. OR if it's an item that is not typically purchased on the spur of the moment.
For example, auto pricing was at one time fairly close to list. Then car dealers started with one promotion after another to the point where even though most rebates and discounts are temporary, consumers have learned that there will ALWAYS be a discount and no one pays list price for cars any more (other than a few rare or super high demand models). Basically, the auto industry has educated consumers to believe that anyone paying list price is a chump.
Another example? Cell phones. Only a tiny percentage of people pay list for cell phones because they've learned that even though the temporary discounts are going to end, there will be another one after that.
Or look at clothing. Particularly stores like Kohls have one sale after another. I can't remember the last time I bought clothes that weren't on sale - because there's ALWAYS something on sale.
There's a book called "how to sell at prices higher than your competition" which is a great read for anyone interested in understanding how to create and maintain pricing power.
A temporary discount can most certainly lead to permanent reduction in pricing power - particularly if the discount is followed by other discounts. OR if it's an item that is not typically purchased on the spur of the moment.
.
True, though since tablets are a very new category there is as yet no expectation of discount or assumption amongst the average consumer that discounts will be recurring. At any rate I'm sure you'll accept that it's far less likely to result in permanent pricing erosion than HP launching the product at the reduced price to begin with. Eventually consumers adapt to sales patterns and retailers or brand owners have to change them or accept them as a permanent part of the retail landscape, but a single swallow does not make a summer.
By the time WIndows 8 rocks around the tablet market will be fully formed, with over 100 million devices being sold per year. Worse Apple will be on their 3rd or 4th generation of tablet OS, even HP and Google will be on their 2nd or 3rd.
That's even assuming that MS is able to deliver a version of Windows that can support such a hybrid mode without either gimping battery life horribly or gimping 'full apps' support.
Frankly I think the playbook has more of a chance than Windows 8 for tablet.
By the time WIndows 8 rocks around the tablet market will be fully formed, with over 100 million devices being sold per year. Worse Apple will be on their 3rd or 4th generation of tablet OS, even HP and Google will be on their 2nd or 3rd.
That's even assuming that MS is able to deliver a version of Windows that can support such a hybrid mode without either gimping battery life horribly or gimping 'full apps' support.
Frankly I think the playbook has more of a chance than Windows 8 for tablet.
I would tend to agree with this!
Except MS has an ace in the hole -- its Office Suite. They could rewrite Office for Windows 8 with a hybrid UI that would only run on Windows 8.
That would make a lot of legacy content (especially for businesses) available only on tablets running Windows 8.
If they don't rewrite the Office UI, there is little advantage, IMO -- as the apps will be unusable on a tablet.
I have always felt that MS should write a version of Office for the iPad to get experience with a tablet UI for these apps. Maybe they have done that but are waiting to publish Office for Windows 8 Tablets only!
Except MS has an ace in the hole -- its Office Suite. They could rewrite Office for Windows 8 with a hybrid UI that would only run on Windows 8.
But they'd need to rewrite more than just the UI, they'd need to completely rewrite the Suite - probably to a thin-client that offloaded the heavy work to either an enterprise App server or a MS owned cloud server. Is it possible? Sure, but it seems a heck of a lot to deliver with the very first windows 8 tablets.
Office is an ace in the hole, but there is a hole in the ace.
Except MS has an ace in the hole -- its Office Suite. They could rewrite Office for Windows 8 with a hybrid UI that would only run on Windows 8.
That would make a lot of legacy content (especially for businesses) available only on tablets running Windows 8.
If they don't rewrite the Office UI, there is little advantage, IMO -- as the apps will be unusable on a tablet.
I have always felt that MS should write a version of Office for the iPad to get experience with a tablet UI for these apps. Maybe they have done that but are waiting to publish Office for Windows 8 Tablets only!
... that's all I've got!
I know I've said it a few times already but once more won't hurt... don't count MS out of this game. None of the other tablets other than the iPad have really found their stride and won't even if you give them another year.
Enter MS with a fully formed business tablet running Win 8 with Office (as you've pointed out) and, voila!, a product in which businesses can sink their teeth.
Time will tell. Anyone saying otherwise... please send me the lottery numbers for the next couple of months... I could use the cash.
But they'd need to rewrite more than just the UI, they'd need to completely rewrite the Suite - probably to a thin-client that offloaded the heavy work to either an enterprise App server or a MS owned cloud server. Is it possible? Sure, but it seems a heck of a lot to deliver with the very first windows 8 tablets.
Office is an ace in the hole, but there is a hole in the ace.
I am not current with Office -- haven't used any Win software for 5 years... so my knowledge is, likely, out of date.
When we were heavily promoting Word/Excel in the computer stores it was the built-in functions and macro flexibility that set office apart. Users could almost write custom Word or Excel apps to create reports, mailing lists, budgets, forecasts, etc.
These relied on capabilities only available in Word or Excel, and therefore locked the users into the base apps. Also, MS-Access... don't even know if that is still around.
Anyway these apps and the custom expansions ran fine on the computers of 5-10 years ago. So, I suspect that a company with some Word reports and Excel forecasts could easily run the equivalent on something with the power of today's iPad.
For the real heavy lifting, they could offer cloud servers... as you describe above. My understanding is that MS is well along in implementing this capability -- so they could possibly offer it along with Windows 8 on any hardware -- kind of a double-whammy for a MS Tablet intro.
I am not current with Office -- haven't used any Win software for 5 years... so my knowledge is, likely, out of date.
When we were heavily promoting Word/Excel in the computer stores it was the built-in functions and macro flexibility that set office apart. Users could almost write custom Word or Excel apps to create reports, mailing lists, budgets, forecasts, etc.
These relied on capabilities only available in Word or Excel, and therefore locked the users into the base apps. Also, MS-Access... don't even know if that is still around.
Anyway these apps and the custom expansions ran fine on the computers of 5-10 years ago. So, I suspect that a company with some Word reports and Excel forecasts could easily run the equivalent on something with the power of today's iPad.
For the real heavy lifting, they could offer cloud servers... as you describe above. My understanding is that MS is well along in implementing this capability -- so they could possibly offer it along with Windows 8 on any hardware -- kind of a double-whammy for a MS Tablet intro.
Sure, 10, even 15 years ago you could run excel and word on 486s and early pentiums but those were very different beasts compared to the modern versions of the software. Since then the scripting system has changed, and you can't neglect the importance of COM based embedded sub-documents.
Mostly though the problem is that if you want/need Office on your tablet it's so you can access all your corporation's Office documents, and the important ones are invariably fricking huge. Because the person creating the document is sat on a big grown up PC they will happily slap it full of embedded graphics, excel charts and whatnot - resulting in a huge memory footprint. That's before you even get into the corporate spreadsheets that are pure bloat - or the horror of an old document that has the amendment tracking thingy turned on.
I've worked in plenty of places that are heavily tied into Excel as I work in finance, and none of them could plausibly port their excel based solutions onto a tablet that had less than the power of a modern laptop - the few places that could do it are the ones that already switched from excel to web-based tools.
As to whether MS is already preparing such thin-client offerings, I've yet to see any indication that this is their vision of cloud computing. Instead they go more for either web based documents, which don't provide full office, or they go for full virtualization - at which point your tablet is just a dumb terminal onto a full blown windows box somewhere else. One way or another it's going to be clunky.
You can't ever count MS out because they're willing to keep pouring money into these things for years, but at this point there's little reason to suspect a huge windows 8 tablet market, even in the enterprise.
Sure, 10, even 15 years ago you could run excel and word on 486s and early pentiums but those were very different beasts compared to the modern versions of the software. Since then the scripting system has changed, and you can't neglect the importance of COM based embedded sub-documents.
Mostly though the problem is that if you want/need Office on your tablet it's so you can access all your corporation's Office documents, and the important ones are invariably fricking huge. Because the person creating the document is sat on a big grown up PC they will happily slap it full of embedded graphics, excel charts and whatnot - resulting in a huge memory footprint. That's before you even get into the corporate spreadsheets that are pure bloat - or the horror of an old document that has the amendment tracking thingy turned on.
I've worked in plenty of places that are heavily tied into Excel as I work in finance, and none of them could plausibly port their excel based solutions onto a tablet that had less than the power of a modern laptop - the few places that could do it are the ones that already switched from excel to web-based tools.
As to whether MS is already preparing such thin-client offerings, I've yet to see any indication that this is their vision of cloud computing. Instead they go more for either web based documents, which don't provide full office, or they go for full virtualization - at which point your tablet is just a dumb terminal onto a full blown windows box somewhere else. One way or another it's going to be clunky.
You can't ever count MS out because they're willing to keep pouring money into these things for years, but at this point there's little reason to suspect a huge windows 8 tablet market, even in the enterprise.
I have to yield to your more recent experience... it is sad though, really, as MS greatest strength -- its legacy support -- will be its ultimate undoing.
Comments
I do not believe that the TouchPad has established itself as a product worth $500.
By reducing the price 20% (however temporarily) it is attempting to establish itself as a product worth $400.
The fact that some resellers will match the manufacturer's 20% reduction further reduces the perceived value of the product.
Let's see Until a few weeks ago, you had to wait 3-5 business days to get a $500 iPad -- because the demand was so high.
HP began shipping the Touchpad of [supposed] equal value 2 months ago.
Now, you can get the TouchPad for 40% less -- it does less, it is heavier and slower...
What is the perceived value of the TouchPad? $500? $400? $300? $0?
Once you sell on price alone, you have no where to go but down!
I agree with you.
A price reduction from the manufacturer tells me that they are trying to find the perceived value of the Touchpad... and it could be zero.
A further price reduction from the retailer tells me that the item isn't selling... at all.
Time to take a bath on the Touchpad, HP.
Once you sell on price alone, you have no where to go but down!
Which, if you stop to think about it rationally is precisely why HP have offered this as a temporary discount. A temporary discount doesn't permanently affect pricing power the way that a drastically reduced RRP would. Surely you can see that just from your own experience shopping for groceries?
Does HP have the best product in the market? Certainly not. But their retail strategy is entirely reasonable given what they do have. Will it succeed in establishing the Touchpad? Probably not, but that's not the fault of the retail marketeers, that's the fault of the product developers.
Wow, any of you guys even used the TouchPad? It's actually pretty good for their first version/attempt. Go ahead, find one and try it. I did out of curiosity and liked it a lot! If only they had a way to switch between keyboard layouts and localization support, but they don't go after anything but the states right now.
The problem with iOS is that it's STALE. Come on, it's been 4 years already, aren't you all bored with the same old that barely even changes? The main attraction of webOS is the attention to detail and because of that there's a huge potential.
While I agree that WebOS has it's good points it won't compete with iOS anytime soon. Again the issue is apps.
Most of these things usually happen because of a couple very devoted folks within the company that have a vision and push things forward, putting love in what they do. I certainly can't say the same thing about Android which is about as lifeless and Windows-like in its ways as it can be. webOS "sees" where it should go, Android on the other hand is blindly stumbling in the dark.
I resist Android simply because of it's association with Google. However it is a mess and I really don't think anybody at Google can see beyond the platform as a advertising and spying mechanism. Even if Android got it's act together I couldn't recommend it to anybody.
Frankly my initiation into iOS devices was on an iPhone 3G which was frankly underpowered. IPhone 4 and my iPad are completely different experiences. Especially when you take into consideration the new iOS versions and the endless apps.
EXACTLY!
iOS did have stale parts, and with each release, Apple has addressed them (the last release finally fixing the awful notification system).
There is very little that is "stale" now. However, I do believe the next step Apple needs to take is a "DashBoard" for iOS. They have taken a small step towards this with the weather app, etc on the notification screen, but they need to open it to 3rd party devs.
Also, they now need better inter-app communication. That is another part that is stale.
It is also going to be very difficult for Apple to address and keep their security model. Frankly I'd rather that they keep iOS secure.
Its really sad when people complain about iOS being stale, and then point out the grid of icons, which means they are completely missing the point of iOS, which is that it serves as a vehicle to deliver great apps, which can convert your 3" device, or your 10" device into any possible product.
Exactly. People need to reread the above again and again to they get it. IPad or iOS success is all about apps.
Which, if you stop to think about it rationally is precisely why HP have offered this as a temporary discount. A temporary discount doesn't permanently affect pricing power the way that a drastically reduced RRP would. Surely you can see that just from your own experience shopping for groceries?
Does HP have the best product in the market? Certainly not. But their retail strategy is entirely reasonable given what they do have. Will it succeed in establishing the Touchpad? Probably not, but that's not the fault of the retail marketeers, that's the fault of the product developers.
I agree that HP can only sell what they have in the wagon... or nothing.
I suspect they have a backlog of product that isn't selling. I do not think that reducing the price will goose the sales enough to solve their backlog problem.
I checked and the TouchPad went on sale July 1 -- a few days over 1 month ago.
This link shows that HP has contracted 400,000-450,000 per month.
HP to ship 3 Million TouchPads the first year; 7-Inch Tablet coming in August
If that is correct, then, HP and its resellers are, likely, sitting on somewhere around 350,000-400,000 unsold units (given the long time HP took to bring the TouchPad to market). And, there's another 400,000 coming...
When the iPad 2 was announced, like Sammy, HP should have gone back to the drawing board -- to, at the very least, bring their hardware into competition.
The big problem, as I see it, is lack of apps and developers! Without them, who will buy a TouchPad? Why?
What they could have done (and still could do):
1) cancel manufacturing of the current model -- pay whatever contract penalties necessary.
2) cancel/postpone the 7-inch model -- pay whatever contract penalties necessary.
3) begin work on a follow-on with the same form factor -- based on assumptions of what iPads will be when the follow-on is ready.
4) contract (pay) major developers to commit to write programs for the TouchPad and its follow-on
5) seed these developers with as many current TouchPads as they need and whatever assistance they need.
6) get the developers to announce their apps which are coming to the TouchPad and when
7) reduce the price of the TouchPad $100 plus $100 worth of free apps/content as they become available
8) announce publicly that HP is in this game for the long haul -- and that they are taking these steps to assure their position in the marketplace.
9) build a follow-on replacement that is as hardware-competitive with the iPad as possible -- even if they must accept low profits until they get a foothold in the market
The TouchPad should be easier to develop for than Android because of a single form factor and no fragmentation or fear of litigation.
That's what i"d do -- and be damned quick about it!
I know of exactly ZERO people that own anything BUT an iPad.
I live in a metropolitan city of appx. 1 million.
I've seen numbers like 63% , but I honestly think Apple's tablet market share is more like 80-90%
That includes a bit of extensive travel for winter vacation. I think android users are just to embarrassed to use them in public.
Which, if you stop to think about it rationally is precisely why HP have offered this as a temporary discount. A temporary discount doesn't permanently affect pricing power the way that a drastically reduced RRP would. Surely you can see that just from your own experience shopping for groceries?
That's not entirely true.
A temporary discount can most certainly lead to permanent reduction in pricing power - particularly if the discount is followed by other discounts. OR if it's an item that is not typically purchased on the spur of the moment.
For example, auto pricing was at one time fairly close to list. Then car dealers started with one promotion after another to the point where even though most rebates and discounts are temporary, consumers have learned that there will ALWAYS be a discount and no one pays list price for cars any more (other than a few rare or super high demand models). Basically, the auto industry has educated consumers to believe that anyone paying list price is a chump.
Another example? Cell phones. Only a tiny percentage of people pay list for cell phones because they've learned that even though the temporary discounts are going to end, there will be another one after that.
Or look at clothing. Particularly stores like Kohls have one sale after another. I can't remember the last time I bought clothes that weren't on sale - because there's ALWAYS something on sale.
There's a book called "how to sell at prices higher than your competition" which is a great read for anyone interested in understanding how to create and maintain pricing power.
That's not entirely true.
A temporary discount can most certainly lead to permanent reduction in pricing power - particularly if the discount is followed by other discounts. OR if it's an item that is not typically purchased on the spur of the moment.
.
True, though since tablets are a very new category there is as yet no expectation of discount or assumption amongst the average consumer that discounts will be recurring. At any rate I'm sure you'll accept that it's far less likely to result in permanent pricing erosion than HP launching the product at the reduced price to begin with. Eventually consumers adapt to sales patterns and retailers or brand owners have to change them or accept them as a permanent part of the retail landscape, but a single swallow does not make a summer.
That seems to be the last hope of the non Apple tablet world.
I want to say 'No, there is another', but there actually isn't
I must have hit my spam reporting quota...
Is there one?
Maybe MeeGo will have a chance!
That seems to be the last hope of the non Apple tablet world.
I want to say 'No, there is another', but there actually isn't
Well, maybe there's one more...
Have a look at this:
Building "Windows 8" - Video #1
And here's an article that discusses hybrid OSes in the near future:
Rise of the planet of the tablets
Well, maybe there's one more...
Have a look at this:
Building "Windows 8" - Video #1
And here's an article that discusses hybrid OSes in the near future:
Rise of the planet of the tablets
By the time WIndows 8 rocks around the tablet market will be fully formed, with over 100 million devices being sold per year. Worse Apple will be on their 3rd or 4th generation of tablet OS, even HP and Google will be on their 2nd or 3rd.
That's even assuming that MS is able to deliver a version of Windows that can support such a hybrid mode without either gimping battery life horribly or gimping 'full apps' support.
Frankly I think the playbook has more of a chance than Windows 8 for tablet.
By the time WIndows 8 rocks around the tablet market will be fully formed, with over 100 million devices being sold per year. Worse Apple will be on their 3rd or 4th generation of tablet OS, even HP and Google will be on their 2nd or 3rd.
That's even assuming that MS is able to deliver a version of Windows that can support such a hybrid mode without either gimping battery life horribly or gimping 'full apps' support.
Frankly I think the playbook has more of a chance than Windows 8 for tablet.
I would tend to agree with this!
Except MS has an ace in the hole -- its Office Suite. They could rewrite Office for Windows 8 with a hybrid UI that would only run on Windows 8.
That would make a lot of legacy content (especially for businesses) available only on tablets running Windows 8.
If they don't rewrite the Office UI, there is little advantage, IMO -- as the apps will be unusable on a tablet.
I have always felt that MS should write a version of Office for the iPad to get experience with a tablet UI for these apps. Maybe they have done that but are waiting to publish Office for Windows 8 Tablets only!
... that's all I've got!
I would tend to agree with this!
Except MS has an ace in the hole -- its Office Suite. They could rewrite Office for Windows 8 with a hybrid UI that would only run on Windows 8.
But they'd need to rewrite more than just the UI, they'd need to completely rewrite the Suite - probably to a thin-client that offloaded the heavy work to either an enterprise App server or a MS owned cloud server. Is it possible? Sure, but it seems a heck of a lot to deliver with the very first windows 8 tablets.
Office is an ace in the hole, but there is a hole in the ace.
I would tend to agree with this!
Except MS has an ace in the hole -- its Office Suite. They could rewrite Office for Windows 8 with a hybrid UI that would only run on Windows 8.
That would make a lot of legacy content (especially for businesses) available only on tablets running Windows 8.
If they don't rewrite the Office UI, there is little advantage, IMO -- as the apps will be unusable on a tablet.
I have always felt that MS should write a version of Office for the iPad to get experience with a tablet UI for these apps. Maybe they have done that but are waiting to publish Office for Windows 8 Tablets only!
... that's all I've got!
I know I've said it a few times already but once more won't hurt... don't count MS out of this game. None of the other tablets other than the iPad have really found their stride and won't even if you give them another year.
Enter MS with a fully formed business tablet running Win 8 with Office (as you've pointed out) and, voila!, a product in which businesses can sink their teeth.
Time will tell. Anyone saying otherwise... please send me the lottery numbers for the next couple of months... I could use the cash.
that seems to be the last hope of the non apple tablet world.
apple is doomed
But they'd need to rewrite more than just the UI, they'd need to completely rewrite the Suite - probably to a thin-client that offloaded the heavy work to either an enterprise App server or a MS owned cloud server. Is it possible? Sure, but it seems a heck of a lot to deliver with the very first windows 8 tablets.
Office is an ace in the hole, but there is a hole in the ace.
I am not current with Office -- haven't used any Win software for 5 years... so my knowledge is, likely, out of date.
When we were heavily promoting Word/Excel in the computer stores it was the built-in functions and macro flexibility that set office apart. Users could almost write custom Word or Excel apps to create reports, mailing lists, budgets, forecasts, etc.
These relied on capabilities only available in Word or Excel, and therefore locked the users into the base apps. Also, MS-Access... don't even know if that is still around.
Anyway these apps and the custom expansions ran fine on the computers of 5-10 years ago. So, I suspect that a company with some Word reports and Excel forecasts could easily run the equivalent on something with the power of today's iPad.
For the real heavy lifting, they could offer cloud servers... as you describe above. My understanding is that MS is well along in implementing this capability -- so they could possibly offer it along with Windows 8 on any hardware -- kind of a double-whammy for a MS Tablet intro.
I am not current with Office -- haven't used any Win software for 5 years... so my knowledge is, likely, out of date.
When we were heavily promoting Word/Excel in the computer stores it was the built-in functions and macro flexibility that set office apart. Users could almost write custom Word or Excel apps to create reports, mailing lists, budgets, forecasts, etc.
These relied on capabilities only available in Word or Excel, and therefore locked the users into the base apps. Also, MS-Access... don't even know if that is still around.
Anyway these apps and the custom expansions ran fine on the computers of 5-10 years ago. So, I suspect that a company with some Word reports and Excel forecasts could easily run the equivalent on something with the power of today's iPad.
For the real heavy lifting, they could offer cloud servers... as you describe above. My understanding is that MS is well along in implementing this capability -- so they could possibly offer it along with Windows 8 on any hardware -- kind of a double-whammy for a MS Tablet intro.
Sure, 10, even 15 years ago you could run excel and word on 486s and early pentiums but those were very different beasts compared to the modern versions of the software. Since then the scripting system has changed, and you can't neglect the importance of COM based embedded sub-documents.
Mostly though the problem is that if you want/need Office on your tablet it's so you can access all your corporation's Office documents, and the important ones are invariably fricking huge. Because the person creating the document is sat on a big grown up PC they will happily slap it full of embedded graphics, excel charts and whatnot - resulting in a huge memory footprint. That's before you even get into the corporate spreadsheets that are pure bloat - or the horror of an old document that has the amendment tracking thingy turned on.
I've worked in plenty of places that are heavily tied into Excel as I work in finance, and none of them could plausibly port their excel based solutions onto a tablet that had less than the power of a modern laptop - the few places that could do it are the ones that already switched from excel to web-based tools.
As to whether MS is already preparing such thin-client offerings, I've yet to see any indication that this is their vision of cloud computing. Instead they go more for either web based documents, which don't provide full office, or they go for full virtualization - at which point your tablet is just a dumb terminal onto a full blown windows box somewhere else. One way or another it's going to be clunky.
You can't ever count MS out because they're willing to keep pouring money into these things for years, but at this point there's little reason to suspect a huge windows 8 tablet market, even in the enterprise.
Sure, 10, even 15 years ago you could run excel and word on 486s and early pentiums but those were very different beasts compared to the modern versions of the software. Since then the scripting system has changed, and you can't neglect the importance of COM based embedded sub-documents.
Mostly though the problem is that if you want/need Office on your tablet it's so you can access all your corporation's Office documents, and the important ones are invariably fricking huge. Because the person creating the document is sat on a big grown up PC they will happily slap it full of embedded graphics, excel charts and whatnot - resulting in a huge memory footprint. That's before you even get into the corporate spreadsheets that are pure bloat - or the horror of an old document that has the amendment tracking thingy turned on.
I've worked in plenty of places that are heavily tied into Excel as I work in finance, and none of them could plausibly port their excel based solutions onto a tablet that had less than the power of a modern laptop - the few places that could do it are the ones that already switched from excel to web-based tools.
As to whether MS is already preparing such thin-client offerings, I've yet to see any indication that this is their vision of cloud computing. Instead they go more for either web based documents, which don't provide full office, or they go for full virtualization - at which point your tablet is just a dumb terminal onto a full blown windows box somewhere else. One way or another it's going to be clunky.
You can't ever count MS out because they're willing to keep pouring money into these things for years, but at this point there's little reason to suspect a huge windows 8 tablet market, even in the enterprise.
I have to yield to your more recent experience... it is sad though, really, as MS greatest strength -- its legacy support -- will be its ultimate undoing.