So I watched the new announcements of the Microsoft Slate and how “everybody” seems to be underwhelmed. Wow, really? Granted it is not that exciting of a topic, but I am not underwhelmed at all.

Actually I am glad Microsoft did what they did. They showed a product that actually looks usable and is not built on hype! In fact I was talking to my wife tonight and thinking that we will be buying this slate from Microsoft. It actually looks like the device I want, and it will definitely put onto the back burner my potential smart phone purchase.

BTW the fact that Apple products are so “great” has to do with Jobs. Google recently presented their Nexus, and if you look at the share price of Google, it sure did not help. The Fast Money crew even called the Google presenter a “Johnson”, and I think he was not being flattering. Steve Jobs and his presenting skills is what makes people think the product is so great! Nothing more, nothing less.

And this now got me to thinking. Has the smart phone market topped? I think that it might have.

Consider my case, or the case of somebody who likes a netbook and has found that a netbook fulfills my needs quite nicely.

  1. Smart phones are BIG! Yes, yes the iPhone is slim, but it is STILL BIG! My current phone is fairly slim, has music, and does what I want it to.
  2. Smart phones are very useful but they have limits. I need a mobile device to track the market because I need to react and the iPhone or Blackberry are barely there.
  3. You can read or do more advanced tasks on a netbook, or the slate.
  4. In combination with a bluetooth phone the slate is a smart phone, albeit bigger.
  5. Smart phones suck in battery life! Or let me rephrase this. Smart phones have great battery life so long as you don’t run applications, make the smart phone into a regular cell phone.

So even though I have been very very critical of Microsoft and Steve Ballmer I have to give Ballmer some credit! Kudos Steve, I for one actually like what you had to present and am actually very interested in purchasing the slate.

BTW if Apple yet again disables bluetooth networking (they did it for the iPod Touch) I for one will lash out and call them a bunch of dufus’s.