Apple Online Store“If the Apple tablet emerges as expected, this will be another big device market, following smartphones, that the PC industry cedes to Apple,” Brooke Crothers reports for CNET.

“What have Microsoft, Intel, HP, and others been offering in the interim years when they had every opportunity to come out with a blockbuster tablet? Unattractive, bulky, half-baked convertible laptops that, let’s put it this way, have not taken the PC market by storm,” Crothers reports.

“So, here’s the $64,000 question, uh, make that the $64 billion question,” Crothers writes. “Why can’t the combined R&D smarts, market clout, and overall technological resources of Microsoft-Intel-HP-Dell come up with a thin, sexy compelling tablet and/or media pad that will turn heads and convince the unbelievers (the average why-would-I-need-something-like-that consumer) that a tablet is a must-have product?”

Crothers writes, “Answer: Because Apple will.”

“Here’s a not unlikely scenario. Apple brings out the tablet/media pad, wows U.S. (and world?) consumers, sells a ton of units, Microsoft-Intel-HP-Dell follow suit with slavishly copied devices that don’t sell very well comparatively,” Crothers reports. “That’s how the market for successful newfangled devices works these days. Apple creates the market and everyone else follows in a panic.”

Read more in the full article here.