New battlefront for portable devices

Not too long ago at WinHEC Bill Gates demoed a new, "ultraportable" device with a seven inch screen. Engadget has posted further comments on the device with a 7" display. At the same time, yesterday saw a flurry of discussion on a number of blogs regarding Apple's tablet patent as originally reported by The Register in August 2004.

It looks like a new category of portable devices will be coming into existence, namelly a tween device, smaller than a laptop, larger than a PDA, aimed at 'medium intensity data input' and information consumption. Basically, these will be devices a bit more suited for writing than existing PDA's which you'll be more likely to carry with you than a laptop.

While the Apple and Microsoft devices are currently still germinating towards a product stage, Sony already has a serious contender. As reviewed here by mobilemag, the Sony Librie strikes me as a great device. The big problem with the beasty is that it's locked into Sony proprietary standards (it uses Memory Stick for storage and a proprietary E-book format) and it's only being sold in Japan.

Take: The development's interesting but I don't see it becoming a mass market device.