Photo: Martin Olsson / Wikimedia Commons

Steve Ballmer made it clear to an analyst this past Thursday that the Windows 7 tablet is inbound. Some blogosphere mutters about the viability and desirability of this move aside, some people have actually suggested ways for Microsoft to win in this area. By focusing on making software – i.e. applications for tablets – and not force-feeding us Windows 7 on tablets.

Developers, developers, developers

Like Microsoft is doing with its Windows Phone 7 platform, the company needs to evangelise developers, developers, developers for tablets. This strategy would not be for its own tablet PC platform, though, but for everybody else’s tablet platform.

In this respect, Microsoft would take their all-dominating corporate applications, namely Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Sharepoint and create mobile, tablet-based versions of these applications. People want access to their documentation and work files on the move, and Microsoft is best poised to deliver this for them.

Imitate the way Google competes with Apple

Photo: Google

In many respects, this application-focused Microsoft tablet PC strategy would imitate Google’s early iPhone strategy. Due to Google search, Google apps, Google maps, and Gmail being so powerful on the iPhone, Google’s applications became synonymous with the iPhone experience. This Google iPhone ubiquity led to the public rejection of Google Voice since, depending on who you believe, Apple feared Google were ‘taking over’ on its platform.

Microsoft would be well served to adopt a similar strategy to both Android-based tablets and the iPad. In fact, what is to stop Microsoft from expanding the strategy to Chrome-based tablets, and, if it proves successful for IBM, the PalmPad or whatever webOS tablet they cook up? Sure, the revenue strategy and motivation will be different from that of Google on the iPhone, but Microsoft of all people are well capable of finding a way to make it work.

Meet Steve and Steve: one aloof, one alive

Photo: Apple

While Steve Jobs can seemingly do no wrong in leading Apple lately, Steve Ballmer is coming under increasing pressure to do better with Microsoft. The company’s classic reactive strategy of compete and destroy in the markets that other companies have proven viable is beginning to wear thin, and proving to be less and less effective.

Where Microsoft must compete and destroy is where it is already destroying by simply spreading its tentacles further. We’re no soothsayers, but Windows 7 for tablets sounded doomed from day one. But imagine Microsoft Office on the iPad that puts Pages to shame and introduces smart syncing techniques to boot. Yeah, that sounds like big money to us, too. Extend Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Exchange and other key corporate Microsoft applications, too, and then boom: suddenly the Cisco Cius could well be perceived as the ideal Microsoft tablet PC platform for enterprise.

It just sounds so much more doable than a Microsoft tablet PC.

Photo: Cisco

While everybody follows Apple into its foray into the consumer tablet market, Cisco computers is aiming to create its own space by developing a tablet computer aimed at enterprise and business.

Say hello to Cius

On Tuesday, 29 June 2010, Cisco unveiled the Cisco Cius, a light, 7-inch tablet built on Google Android. Cisco is selling the tablet PC to enterprise and business users as a communication and collaboration tool. The Cisco Cius will have wi-fi connectivity, as well as connectivity with mobile networks to connect business users to one another.

Features

Being built on Google Android, the tablet will naturally have access to applications built for that platform. The custom features Cisco are punting, though, are the ability to perform portable video conferencing, as well as native remote access to a user’s desktop computer.

How about that, Apple?

This move is a masterstroke on Cisco’s part, in that while everyone else tries to muscle themselves into the space the iPad has taken an early lead in, the Cisco Cius is pulling in a different direction and aiming at a different (although admittedly overlapping) audience.

And now, Apple?

Apple won’t feel threatened by the Cisco tablet, but the growing ubiquity of Google Android on tablets has to be cause for concern. The iPad is currently selling like hotcakes, moving 3 million units in three months, while other manufacturers scramble to ship their own tablet computers.

Next to smartphones, the tablet has to be considered the most fascinating market in computing right now, with the as-yet undetermined long-term winner likely to make boatloads of money.