14 DAY TRIAL // Companies may have been optimistic about their tablets until recently, but the coming of the iPad 2 seems to have caused many to reassess their projects' potential and even come up with plans to make netbooks with tablet specifications.
It seems that tables keep turning on the market of tablet PCs as Apple and others alternate between optimism and cautiousness.
During the Mobile World Congress 2011 expo, and then CeBIT, notebook makers looked like they were finally getting a handle on things on the slate market.
Then, the iPad 2 came out and smashed hard against whatever plans other companies had at the time.
At first it was implied that IT players would try and release their tablets faster, since the iPad 2 came out sooner than they expected.
Later, however, the opposite was said to have happened, as companies needed to reimagine their products' configurations for lower prices.
Now, yet another report made by Digitimes has notebook makers devising a different sort of strategy, one that involves those low-end laptops that slates are supposedly harming.
It has already been said that netbooks are losing market share because of how quickly the tablet segment has evolved.
Apparently, the idea has appeared to design such laptops with specifications similar to those of tablets, though the enterprise market is the main target in this case, not consumers.
Acer is one company that wants to avoid the so-called iPad 2 wave if at all possible, hence its decision to do something of this sort.
Meanwhile, ASUS is adding external keyboards to its 10.1-inch Eee Pad products, turning it into a full-featured PC.
Another mention is made of HP, whose notebook department might be allowed to design the next-generation Touchpad tablet, even though the first one was made by its smartphone team. Of course, just what becomes of this whole situation remains to be seen.