Read the top two answers (Bill Bliss, Robert Scoble), and it seems they're missing what I see as the most obvious and comprehensive answer. Bliss touches on it in passing, but not as a main theme...<p>The real reason MS doesn't get tablets is that it's a new product category, and MS pretty much always thinks in terms of how to extend who they are (Desktop) into any new market. XBox hardly counts; while it's a great product they did not have to define the market in any way, they moved in and made a solid product in a well defined market. With Kinect they really did something outrageously cool, but this isn't usual for them.<p>Apple, on the other hand, has shown the ability to look at niche markets and see the bigger picture, turning it mainstream. iPod, iPhone, iPad: all of these areas had existing companies with somewhat successful products, but definitely niche.<p>Sometimes MS reminds me of Xerox's lack of foresight with PARC.
><i>"While the iPad is selling like multi-touch hotcakes, Microsoft is significantly lagging behind with its tablet offerings"</i><p>There is a category mistake underlying the article. Microsoft does not sell tablets. Furthermore, their operating systems have dominated the tablet segment for more than a decade and been the OS of choice for leading tablet manufacturer's such as Fujitsu for nearly 20 years.[<a href="http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/History/tablet-pc-history_07.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/H...</a>]<p>The iPad is successful mainly because of Apple's ability to market it to consumers rather than the businesses which have traditionally used tablets and are always the centerline of Microsoft's roadmap. But the tablet market did not spring into being last April - NASA put tablets running Windows 95 in orbit aboard the Space Shuttle in 1997. [<a href="http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/History/tablet-pc-history_09.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/H...</a>]
A great quote from Robert Scoble: "I remember talking with [Microsoft executives] on the mobile team when I worked there in 2005. They said they were going after enterprises only and didn't care about consumers. Apple knew that wouldn't work. Enterprises don't like new things. Consumers do."
Microsoft simply doesn't need to "understand tablets", at least not right now. Microsoft's key products, Windows and Office, are the de facto standards of the office. Tablets won't change that.
The article also has something factually wrong (attributed to MS): in the corporate world, the Ipad is useful for discussing documents o presentations around a table, between two or three people, when undocking a notebook takes way more than the time you need to set up an Ipad.<p>I also made that mistake in the begining, I had to see the Ipad in action to valuate it as the right tool for that job.
When talking about Microsoft and tablets, two other companies spring to mind: Apple (of course) and Amazon.<p>I'm reminded of the command, infantry and police quote (via [1]). Small startups are typically nimble. They're commandos. At some point the beachhead is established and you need an army. Once you've won the war you need the police.<p>At some point in a company's history it will switch from an attacking posture to a defensive posture. Microsoft has almost all of the desktop OS and office software market. There's nothing really left to attack there. So now they're chasing shadows, afraid of the golden goose dying. Everything is seen as either a threat to Windows/Office or a means to sell more licenses.<p>Microsoft bought the (then very successful) Sidekick, tried to do a followup, for political reasons had the entire thing rewritten in a Windows OS (that delayed things 2 years) and you ended up with the Kin.<p>Windows/Office are so big (in terms of MS revenue) that nothing else matters.<p>Ultimately Microsoft is about selling Windows/Office licenses to large enterprises and OEMs. Everything else is a distraction (including the consumer).<p>Now compare this to (the quite brilliant) Jeff Bezos. When he came out with the Kindle I was rather surprised to see two teams working on this: the software team and the hardware team. This entered the public eye really with the iPhone/iPad when the software was ported there. At first I thought "that's going to kill the Kindle hardware" and it might, but that's kind of the point.<p>If the Kindle hardware is good enough to stand up on it's own merits then it will survive. If not, Amazon is already invested in the tablet/smartphone segment. So both teams are motivated to succeed. This is an object lesson in having the right incentives.<p>Apple springs to mind for the obvious reasons: they completely reinvented the phone and now the tablet. Now every phone looks like an iPhone and every tablet looks like the iPad.<p>Apple, unlike Microsoft, are a consumer hardware and digital content company. Their OS exists to sell hardware. A lot of people see iOS and think that OS X is doomed and eventually all Apple hardware will be in Apple's walled garden.<p>This is a very Microsoft way of thinking.<p>Under the covers there are a lot of similarities between iOS and OS X but iOS is still very different. Where Microsoft simply tried (and continues to try) to sell Windows computers in the form of tablets, Apple made the right tool for the job. What that does to the future of OS X, if anything, is irrelevant. The experience is what matters.<p>Oh and for the record, I don't think OS X is doomed. It's probably not as important as it once was but it will still power the "trucks" Steve Jobs talked about last year. If anything, OS X will simply be made to look more like iOS and you see this in the Lion developer preview.<p>The problem with Microsoft is they have a business wonk as a leader (who is no visionary of any kind) and they have no courage for the kind of risky decisions they'd need to make to reinvent themselves.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/commandos-infantry-and-police.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/commandos-infantry-...</a>
It would be nice if tablets could interface with printers and other peripherals and come with a functioning Office suite. Flash and copy/paste won't hurt either.