RIP UMPC?

What do you think? Are the UMPC dead? Here is what Gail Levy, marketing director of TabletKiosk, the maker of the first UMPC to hit the market has to say about it:

Every month, our eo sales continue to grow as more of our customers find the benefits of using a mobile, 7" touch screen computer, and at CES 2009 we will be showing our latest line extensions which we have developed in response to customer requests.

Our customers are attracted to the eo line because of its 7" touch screen which can run the full Windows OS. This is key because they are running or accessing full X86 applications and cannot use Windows Mobile, CE, or any other condensed program to run their software. The 7" screen can output to 1024x768 resolution without sacrificing viewability.

In our experience, these customers never utilized any of the consumer-friendly "Origami Experience" applications , which were designed by Microsoft to increase productivity, because these programs were simply not developed for business usage.

So to those that are nailing the coffin closed, playing taps or sitting "shivah" for the UMPC form factor, consider if you really saying goodbye to the UMPC as Microsoft's promise of the do-everything, inexpensive, mobile computer (the one being handily replaced by the netbook and mobile phone). From my perspective, the 7" touch screen tablet has a very bright future and isn't going away anytime soon!

It took me a while to understand it but at the end I came to the conclusion that the original concept from Microsoft just transformed it self in a wider concept where we have now a group of devices within the range between 5 to 10 inches that before was not almost targeted and when it was the price was extremely high. Like Gail I believe that we still see in the future UMPCs and Tablet PCs. Including within the UMPC category notebooks and 7 inches “Origamis”.