Bill Gates Ultimately Contributed to Microsoft Courier Tablet Computer's Demise

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As it stands today, Apple has established a solid lead in the tablet market, thanks to the iPad creating such a huge demand for tablet computers with an intuitive and integrated OS and user experience. Microsoft could have challenged the iPad right after launch, but top brass pulled the plug on its Courier project just as it was gaining steam.

Apple is known for its rebellious ways, which is perhaps the biggest influence the late ex-CEO Steve Jobs had on the company he co-founded. As such, Apple decides to create its own markets, rather than follow existing market trends when developing products. Microsoft, meanwhile, instinctively sticks to the status quo, and prefers to build on markets that are already existing, and markets that it already has experience in.

As such, Microsoft could have made it big in the tablet market, but decided to stick with Windows and their existing investment in the Outlook and Exchange server business. Why? Because Bill Gates thinks so.

In the previous years, Microsoft was rumored to be hard at work on its Courier effort, led by Xbox creator J Allard. The courier was to be a dual-screen device that accepted both touch and pen-based inputs. The Courier, as its creators claim, will be a device meant more for content production than consumption. This means it was targeted at the creative types, and was meant for drawing, sketching, laying-out, typing, and the like.

However, as sources put it, Steve Ballmer called for a meeting that included the Courier’s creators in early 2010, along with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and other Microsoft top executives. Gates was wondering how users could access email, seeing that the device did not come with a native email client. Allard argued that the Courier was not meant for content consumption, and that its target market is expected to have smartphones for quick mobile email access and desktop computers for more serious work.

Gates “had an allergic reaction,” as a member of the Courier development team was quoted to say. Within a few weeks, the Courier was cancelled because it didn’t fit well with Microsoft’s Windows and Office franchises. While Gates did not directly pull the plug (he no longer has executive control over Microsoft), his concern about compatibility with the company’s existing business thrusts ultimately contributed to the Courier’s demise.

The Courier team was already making breakthroughs by then, and Microsoft could have launched a product just a few months after Apple’s first-generation iPad launched. The company, however, chose to stick with Windows, and that strategy has cost them lead time in the market. Now, Microsoft is banking on Windows 8 as their main challenge to the existing tablet efforts from Apple, Google (Android) and other companies like RIM (BlackBerry PlayBook) and HP (TouchPad webOS). Analysts say that Apple is likely to keep at least a two-thirds share of the tablet market once Windows 8 launches by 2012.

As history would have it, Microsoft sticks too much with its traditional approach to doing business, such as by focusing too much on evolution in its products rather than innovation.

Concept image credit: Gizmodo