Microsoft Kills 'Courier' Tablet (VIDEO)

UPDATE 4/30/2010 8:54 AM ET: Will Microsoft be tablet-less?

New reports from Hewlett Packard suggest that HP has scrapped the HP Slate, a tablet unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer earlier this year.

TechCrunch writes,

Hewlett-Packard has killed off its much ballyhooed Windows 7 tablet computer, says a source who's been briefed on the matter. ... But our source tells us that HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a tablet operating system and has terminated the project (something CrunchGear mentioned months ago).

---
According to reports from Microsoft employees, the mysterious and innovative Microsoft "Courier" tablet, which would have been a rival to the iPad, is not to be.

Leaked video, photos, and specs suggested the tablet would be a two-screen, touchscreen "digital journal," weighing just over a pound, measuring less than an inch thick and about the size of a book.

But the "iPad Killer" has been killed. "Microsoft execs informed the internal team that had been working on the tablet device that the project would no longer be supported," writes Gizmodo.

VP of corporate communications for Microsoft, Frank Shaw, told the press:

At any given time, across any of our business groups, there are new ideas being investigated, tested, and incubated. It's in Microsoft's DNA to continually develop and incubate new technologies to foster productivity and creativity. The "Courier" project is an example of this type of effort and its technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.

So what are we missing out on? See the video below, via Engadget, for a look at what the Microsoft Courier might have been.

WATCH:

Comments

[sharpstick]

01:04 PM on 05/26/2010

LOL!!!

It was NEVER even a mockup.

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/25380/

[Blair Erickson]

10:38 PM on 05/03/2010

Any minute now these fools will stop buying Apple products and return to Mama Microsoft. And the Zune is totally going to bring down this iPod fad. Just you wait sheeple fools! Ballmer is not merciful. He knows what Americans want, tech specs, ports, device drivers, and the same UI since 1995. Apple is dooooooooomed.

[sharpstick]

01:13 PM on 05/26/2010

Fanned :D

[gsteinum]

03:25 PM on 05/03/2010

seems illustrative of microsoft's focus of taking over markets and deemphasizing innovation.

[situationcritical]

11:00 AM on 05/03/2010

Ballmer may have "unveiled" the thing, but he never proved that the thing did what it was purported to do, and no one got the chance to test it. It was just a dummy. It never really existed.

[ESLundo]

10:59 AM on 05/03/2010

The impact of apps residing in the cloud along with the rest of the bits means that Microsoft's past strategy of being a fast follower rather than a market leader does not work anymore. You need to get out ahead of the tech parade with products that please consumers and provide money for developers.

[lonewolfgoingaooo]

07:55 AM on 05/03/2010

So the "ipad k/ller" is buried even before it is released. Perhaps people should wait before they attach these labels?

[maxbianco]

01:53 AM on 05/03/2010

The death of the "ipad killer" LOL

see ya real zoon at the apple store!!

hahahahaha

[Mithrandir Greyholm]

06:44 PM on 05/02/2010

Hewlett Packard just bought Palm. Maybe they have decided to go with that technology. Palm has it's own OS which they may prefer to Windows.

[BrandonHill]

07:25 PM on 05/02/2010

Thats exactly the reason why they scrapped the Win 7 tablet (Slate).

Palm's webOS is awesome and has tremendous potential for application development like in Android and iPhone OS. So HP doesnt need MS anymore for the OS.

[Mithrandir Greyholm]

09:48 PM on 05/02/2010

I for one can't wait until they show us something that will blow Ipad out of the waters!

[Tyrione]

02:12 AM on 05/03/2010

No. They wanted to be in the mobile space and buying Palm gives them those contracts and IP. They will test the waters with already released Palm products before they invest hundreds of millions of more into an iPad competitor.

[goddessNdiva]

05:38 PM on 05/02/2010

I never link to other web sites but this guy is a genius. I hope that his technology takes off.

His name is Pranav and he is creating the next best thing to come to this world, IMO.

www.economictimes.indiatimes.com/tv/TED-India-Pranav-Mistry/videoshow_ted/5231080.cms

[BrandonHill]

07:28 PM on 05/02/2010

You mean Pranav Mistry and his "Sixth Sense" Technology?

Its quite awesome really. The first time I saw it in TED and I was really impressed with the way he has implemented it so well.

And guess what, he is going to make that technology "Open Source" so that anyone can develop applications based on his technology for the greater good. That was the instant when I became his admirer. He is being selfless, if he had patented it, he could have made millions.

[goddessNdiva]

08:46 PM on 05/02/2010

Really? Open Source? I love this guy, he is making my Star Trek dreamworld a reality.

[situationcritical]

11:16 AM on 05/03/2010

Great technology. But come on...the walls never really got painted. Anyone know where I can find a good painter? My house needs painting.

[kcwookie]

08:01 AM on 05/02/2010

Having used netbooks and iPads, iPads will carry the day. The original iPod didn't come out with a tenth of the stuff the current ones have and the original iPod game was an Easter Egg. Say what you want, but time will tell.

I could care less about flash, I want my iPad to directly access my iDisk.

[BrandonHill]

07:33 PM on 05/02/2010

I concur. I think iPad is a revolutionary product just like the iPhone was. It changed the game and so will iPad.
I also believe what we are seeing at present is a very basic versions of iPad, Apple is going to extend and develop it to be indespensible or even mainstream.

To be honest I'm not a big Apple fan, but I give credit to those who deserve it. Microsoft changed Personal Computing. Google changed the Internte, Apple os changing the Mobile Computing.

[AmandaBC]

09:54 PM on 05/02/2010

"I could care less about flash"

Yeah, god-steve has convinced all his army of drones that flash is useless. They don't need to ascertain if that's actually true (it's not), because it's a RELIGION and religious people believe whatever kooky story their priests/ministers/rabbis etc. tell them...

[NHBill]

12:30 AM on 05/03/2010

“"The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only."

Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager, Internet Explorer

[jabailo]

11:33 PM on 05/01/2010

Fortunately or unfortunately (for them), Microsoft doesn't have a zombot army of legion followers who will buy any white and chrome rectangular object they put on the market. MS engineers have to design to sell to a free minded audience.

[yogandclimber]

12:23 AM on 05/02/2010

This is funny!

[SilentSolidarity]

01:12 AM on 05/02/2010

True!!

[NHBill]

12:23 AM on 05/03/2010

There is a pretty strong name calling army of PC heads here!
They are buying tons of PCs and netbooks.
The world turns.

[JohnSawyer]

10:33 PM on 05/01/2010

So even Microsoft and HP bow down to the great destroyer god that is Apple! (not)

I'm sure some people think Apple is somehow "responsible" for this.

[spyguy68]

03:25 AM on 05/02/2010

I suspect that HP (a very financially conservative company) and MS ran the numbers and decided to just let Apple have a few thousand customers while HP and MS expand the netbook market by hundreds of millions.

Keep in mind that Toshiba and other have had tablet type computers for over five years and they have had very, very limited sales.

[AmandaBC]

05:45 AM on 05/02/2010

Toshiba netbooks are the best and they're selling like hotcakes. The latest models with the Atom 450 have a battery life in excess of 12 hours and they outperform the iPad in every department.

[SanityForOnce]

02:02 PM on 05/02/2010

A "few thousand customers"? I think you're off by just a tiny bit. ;-)

Apple has already sold over a million iPads at this point. After being on the market for only a short while, Apple has nearly sold as many iPads as there are Kindles in the market.

With no alternative tablet products to compete with right now, the iPad market share will continue to grow.

[NHPat]

08:49 AM on 05/03/2010

I'm pretty sure it's Bush's fault - isn't everything???

[Blair Erickson]

08:21 PM on 05/01/2010

I liked that all the geeks lined up to loudly and angrily proclaim their loyalty and wallet money to a Microsoft vaporware product that didn't even get released. If we were still doing things the way that the tech nerds insist is "real computing" we'd all still be using command line interfaces and they'd be griping about the plebeians not understanding directory structures.

The future is here, now, kids. Stop trying to drag the prehistoric interfaces along with it, drop the anti-user baggage and embrace change.

[JohnSawyer]

09:19 PM on 05/01/2010

You mean we shouldn't all be writing our own drivers from scratch? :)

[Morgantheaxe]

11:12 PM on 05/01/2010

Here here.....raise a glass to you sir!

[yogandclimber]

07:46 PM on 05/01/2010

They were going to try to fit windows 7 in an iPad. That was about to be a disaster with boot up, virus scans, dumb flah crashing, drivers, hardware and memory requirements. Nah forget that. The iPad runs on 16 gig and push a button. Guaranteed there will be a Windows iPad operating system with very simple apps (600meg vs 30 gig ms office monster).

[vmlinux]

12:10 AM on 05/02/2010

This post is spot on. Having a thin BSD based OS with a stripped down highly customized GUI specifically designed to run on hardware with only apps approved gives a huge advantage when it comes to speed on lower power hardware.

[spyguy68]

03:30 AM on 05/02/2010

Actually Windows 7 Embedded would not have those problems. Embedded system designers are already very happy to transition from Win XP embedded to Win 7 embedded (there was no Win Vista embedded, for some reason).

Not only that, but MS ALSO has Windows CE (AKA windows mobile) which is designed from the ground up to look and feel like its desktop brother but run very well on smaller embedded systems.

[rocketman69]

04:51 AM on 05/02/2010

Yep, crashes just like it's brother.

[AppleJuiceJunkie316]

07:17 PM on 05/01/2010

Tablet PC's are useless. With cellphones doing much of the work that laptops can and laptops being necessary for the work cell's can't do, I don't see much of a market for a tablet PC. But then again, people (Bill Gates specifically) have said that 64KB of memory was, "All the memory you'd ever need." I worked with the iPad, I don't see much use for it honestly so maybe this wasn't a bad call for Microsoft. After the buzz wears off, it'll probably be another Newton.

[JohnSawyer]

09:28 PM on 05/01/2010

I can see at least two uses for tablet computers:

- Keep one in the bathroom so you can read it while on the toilet. Easier than perching a laptop computer on your bare legs (especially when the computer gets hot), and it has a bigger screen than a phone. And, if you go into the bathroom without your phone, the tablet computer would be waiting for you there instead.

- Instead of using a notebook computer in bed, use a tablet computer so you can type without any mechanical keyboard and trackpad click sounds that might annoy your bed partner.

[NHBill]

03:11 PM on 05/02/2010

Hold on to that buggy whip.

[AmandaBC]

02:04 AM on 05/03/2010

"- Instead of using a notebook computer in bed, use a tablet computer so you can type without any mechanical keyboard and trackpad click sounds that might annoy your bed partner."

I'm afraid tapping on glass is just as annoying...

[BrandonHill]

07:47 PM on 05/02/2010

iPad is the perfect consumers gadget. Its destined to mainstream as more and more people consume new/video and other media online and iPad is the perfect gadget for that.
Not just iPad, when Google tablet launches it would compete with the iPad similar to what we see between Android and iPhone.

[NHBill]

12:37 AM on 05/03/2010

Microsoft is the odd man out in the new mobile computing universe.
They spent so much time trying to get Windows right they missed the boat on iPods, phones and now slates or pads.
It's an Apple/Google world in the mobile space.
Can they catch up?
Not if Zune is any indication.