From my previous post: Microsoft and Tablet PC manufacturers have a hard road ahead of them. Who should they be targetting? Developers? (yes) Consumers? (iffy) Corporations? (yes yes yes).

IF IF they want the consumer market, that will be the rockiest road. I had a long talk with a friend who is a passionate tablet pc end-user – not a developer and not using custom apps. Just using it as her main computer. Her advice is this: target the 40+ crowd. Target the crowd that wrote all of their college theses by hand (before they sat down at a typewriter to make it legible). The crowd that does not type 100 words a minute on a computer. The crowd that travels and has to work on planes (in coach, with no room for a keyboard).

I’m sure she would be MORE than happy to talk to the marketers.

As for marketing to the developers, Lora says that Microsoft still missed a big opportunity at MDC : “Judging by the number of people in the hands-on labs and in the sessions I’d say that had the Tablet PC been given a more prominent spot in the conference the group could have accomplished even more.”

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