Microsoft Courier Tablet Project Gets Confirmed & Officially Canceled; It Really Never Was Official

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It was definitely fun while it lasted, tablet lovers! We had two interesting iPad rivals, at least on paper, and now it looks like none of them is coming anytime soon. The HP Slate will be probably delayed in order for HP to be able to focus on its Palm acquisition first, and the Microsoft Courier will apparently never see the light of day, or the darkness of night for that matter.

The Courier, once believed to be a very hot iPad alternative was never made official. We waited in vain for it to arrive at CES 2010 and then we hoped we’d see it announced later on, but that hasn’t happen.

We found out about Courier plans and the Courier UI unofficially and today, just as unofficially, or at least almost, we find out that the Microsoft Courier tablet plans have been cancelled.

“According to sources familiar with the matter,” Microsoft decided it was time for the Courier to die in peace after having lived a short, but interesting life. Frank Shaw, Microsoft Corporate VP of Communications said about the Courier:

At any given time, we’re looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It’s in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.

At least someone over at Microsoft had the decency of confirming the device to the crowds. It’s probably easy to do it since the device is not coming anytime soon. And maybe never!

Is Microsoft afraid of making the Courier at this time? Has the iPad’s success scared away Redmond into reassessing its mobile strategy? We really hope Steve Ballmer and Co. are working on something hot enough to be able to compete against the iPad. As good as this Apple tablet might be, we wouldn’t want to see it rule the Universe so soon, would we?