Microsoft has started it's war against Apple's iPad, handing their reseller partners material to show their customers pointing why the iPad is not the solution they should be using for their enterprise needs. Distributed starting around December of last year, the material lists reasons why people should either move away from the iPad for enterprise needs or why they should not go towards the iPad in the first place.
Absent from the anti-iPad materials seems to be information on what Microsoft plans to utilize on their own future tablets to combat the 7.3 million iPads sold in Q1 2011. Given past demos of Windows 7 tablets, most notably the HP Slate tablet, were far from touch friendly, and Steve Ballmer keeps insisting the touch-optimized Windows Phone 7 platform is staying put, that leaves Windows 8 on the table... when it gets ARM optimized in 2 years...
Meanwhile Apple is citing an unprecedented enterprise adoption rate with over 80% of Fortune 100 companies piloting or actively deploying iPad already. Microsoft is right to be worried but are these PowerPoint slides enough or do they have to field an actual device to compete with Apple?
[ ZDNet ]
