by Shelly Blake-Plock
Windows.
That's my prediction. Here's my rationale: Windows 8 has been designed especially for touchscreen computing. Windows is the overwhelming winner in the enterprise market. Major PC manufacturers from HP to Dell are re-evaluating their business in a post-iPad world. In the short term, no PC company is going to catch up to the iPad. And the Kindle Fire will soak up much of the remaining consumer market for folks who just want to watch movies and read books on a tablet.
While Android phones will continue to gain market share -- though with a $99 iPhone 3S floating around, it will be interesting to watch what happens -- Android tablets will get squeezed out by Apple and Amazon on the consumer side and by Windows tablets in business. Windows is what business trusts and Windows will be what business goes to as tablet computing hits the workplace in a big way. Watch for a company like Nvidia to monopolize the need for increased graphics capability on tablets and watch the usual suspects -- HP, Sony, Dell, Lenovo, Asus -- all come out with Windows-based tablets.
My guess is that this will all burst on to the scene in a big way for the post-election holiday season of 2012. We'll likely see the big commercial blitz over the summer to coordinate with television advertising for the candidates and on the Internet streams of political shows on MSNBC, Fox, and the like.
And then you'll start seeing them in schools. Because high schools -- high schools are likely where the majority of 1:1 tablets will come in because of online AUP/TOS policies regarding younger kids -- will do as they have traditionally tried to do and follow the lead of business and higher ed when it comes to tech buying decisions.
And so, starting in 2013, we'll see the first wave of Windows tablets entering classrooms. That momentum will build as the price of productivity-oriented Windows tablets comes down and the need for 1:1 connectivity will become increasingly an infrastructure and instructional expectation (as well as a necessary way to deal with online textbooks in places like CA) -- starting in a big way in suburban public schools, but also building off early forays into mobile learning in urban and rural schools. Most private schools -- at least those with an eye to maintaining high college placement stats -- will make Windows tablets the standard 1:1 learning device / notebook / organizer in those settings.
By 2016 or so, Windows tablets will be the industry standard.
Of course, I could be totally wrong. This is just a prediction. And in many ways it's a ludicrous prediction, but I'm willing to put it out there.