CES 2010 and the Apple Tablet: the Elephant in the Room

By now, rumors of an Apple Tablet have generated literally millions of words of wild speculation, but it's still frustrating that going into CES last week, the most-anticipated gadget of 2010 was a still-unreleased product whose existence has never been truly confirmed. Given how the iPod/iPhone's innovations took exhibitors by surprise years ago, many companies used CES as an attempt to remain one step ahead of Apple. Many of the announced products, if not a direct response to tablet rumors, represented an inaugural launch or definitive step by these companies into the still-nascent markets an Apple tablet might occupy: e-book reading, large-form-factor touch computing and high-powered mobile graphics.

First off, as I don't really know where to stick this random picture, let's just go ahead and discuss this now:

Engadget posted a picture of this slide at NVIDIA's CES keynote (where NVIDIA announced its new Tegra 2 system-on-a-chip), without much comment. While I think Apple might go with a graphics-optimized chip like Tegra 2 for future mobile devices, like iPhones or a tablet, I'm less sure about Adobe AIR.

Apple's repeatedly refused to support Adobe Flash on the iPhone OS, choosing instead to push websites to adopt iPhone-optimized H.264 video as well as Apple's own QuickTime standards. However, I doubt the company would use another proprietary Adobe product as the linchpin of a broad new initiative to sell digital newspapers and magazines. Yet at the very least, it's interesting to see what Apple might be competing against.

Another trend among this year's announcements was a new category of computers called "slate PCs", a buzzword with (as far as I can tell) indeterminate significance. Many of the slates announced were nothing special, just standard tablet-shaped PCs of various sizes intended to take advantage of Windows 7's multi-touch capabilities. Dell revealed a 5-inch slate running Android at its keynote, sporting a virtual keyboard and a customized UI akin to HTC's Sense or Motorola's BLUR. On one hand, these seem more like iterative products than any real innovation, part of a larger indication of the industry's confidence in Android and Windows 7 to scale well to atypical form factors. On the other, we still have no information on the Apple tablet, other than vague rumors. If Apple is indeed planning this product, who's to say it will be anything other than iterative? The direction of the industry at large could provide a hint as to Apple's approach: the tablet could merely be a reflection of Apple's confidence in its iPhone OS, a confirmation that they believe a multi-touch interface can work in a larger format.

E-readers also dominated many of the CES debuts. There were showcases of display tech innovations like early color e-ink devices, Pixel Qi's dual-mode screen and mirasol displays on the show floor (the latter two of which I discussed in my first tablet post). There were products from entirely new e-reader companies and company divisions, from Bookeen and Copia to Samsung's new touchscreen e-readers. E-ink displays, with their low power consumption and superior readability to conventional LCDs, are clearly going to be a major competitor if Apple launches a reading device.

I found Plastic Logic, in particular, to be worth a look. It launched its touchscreen QUE proReader at CES, intended for business use. The company has filled the QUE's home screen with useful information—everything from a list of your recently added content to your Outlook emails. As it's an e-ink display, the refresh rate is extremely low (about once per second) so it would be difficult to do anything truly productive on the device other than passively view content, but it's an interesting attempt from Plastic Logic to create a compelling interface for a reading device.

It's important for Apple to have a motivation to innovate. If its competitors don't pose a real threat, it won't work to create something on the scale of the iPhone or the Macbook Air. Thankfully, CES showed that Apple has plenty to sweat over.