Instead of unveiling an elegant response to the iPad, Microsoft came to the tech industry’s premier gadget show with a collection of exposed computer guts, news about microchips and a shallow preview of yet another Windows.
The uninspiring performance served as a reminder that the world’s largest software maker remains years from a serious entry into the tablet craze, raising more doubts about whether Microsoft Corp. will ever be able to grab a meaningful piece of this fast-growing segment. If it can’t, Microsoft Corp.’s dominance of personal computers may become increasingly irrelevant as people embrace ever-sleeker portable devices.
CEO Steve Ballmer mostly lingered on what went right last year when he gave the company’s customary keynote on the eve of the International Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday. He had his share to boast about. Xbox 360 and the Kinect motion-sensing controller that’s racked up more than $1 billion in sales in just two months, a ground-up overhaul of the Windows smart-phone software and rapid adoption of Windows 7 on PCs are all legitimate successes.
Still, it’s hard for anyone to applaud Microsoft without noting the threats posed by the growing popularity of Apple Inc.’s iPad. It’s also hard to see Windows as a tablet contender amidst an onslaught of new tablets running Google Inc.’s Android software, which has already helped turn mobile phones into mini-computers.
Those concerns have been weighing on Microsoft stock, which has hovered around the $20 to $30 range for the past decade. Apple, on the other hand, has seen its share price more than triple since the first iPhone was announced in early 2007. Last year, Apple’s market capitalization surpassed Microsoft’s, making Apple the second-largest U.S. public company after Exxon Mobil Corp.
Microsoft has not been absent from the tablet discussion — Windows tablets have been around for years, but the…