As the tablet computer war heats up, one of the most interesting possible entries was Courier, a prototype that Microsoft was developing. But according to recent news reports, Microsoft executives told the internal team earlier this week that the project is dead.
Courier was never actually announced or even acknowledged by Microsoft, although there have been leaks of a video and photos. The video showed an innovative, two-screen tablet device with the screens able to act as one large, virtual desktop. The leaked information also indicated that Courier would have both touch- and pen-based interfaces.
‘A Digital Unicorn’
A Microsoft official told news media that the company is always developing new ideas, that the Courier project will be evaluated again in the future, and that, at the moment, there are no plans to build this tablet.
The tablet that Microsoft is publicly promoting is Hewlett-Packard’s Slate, which uses Windows 7. The HP device was first seen in prototype form during Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
But there are now reports that HP is canceling its Slate tablet, because the Windows 7 operating system on which it was built — and which Ballmer highlighted — is not optimal for tablets. HP had been steadily releasing information and videos about Slate, and a mid-2010 release was being discussed.
Michael Gartenberg, a partner at The Altimeter Group, said the Courier project “was sort of a digital unicorn that never existed — and now has died.”
“Microsoft needs to find a tablet solution,” he said, and “putting touch on top of Windows 7, as in Slate, wasn’t the solution.” He added that the Courier video looked like the company was experimenting with a new kind of operating system that was “something not seen before” from Microsoft.
Was Courier Actual Hardware?
If the project was killed…