If 2009 was the year of netbooks I can foresee 2010 as the year of the touch tablets. There are too many rumors, too many certainties and too much buzz around this subject not to believe what I’m saying. Manufacturers are interested, publishers see a new distribution model here and consumers seem to glance their heads at the idea of touch tablets used to browse the web.

    The latest rumor states that Google was working the past 18 months along with HTC on releasing a touch tablet device, first with Android and then with Chrome OS, a device that’s supposed to get people online and use Google services with ease and at a very ‘popular’ price point, making the idea of owning a touch tablet as a secondary computing device viable.

    Clearly a Google tablet mockup

    Clearly a Google tablet mockup

    As you might expect, this is a rumor in a very incipient state, with no additional details released, but that doesn’t mean I can’t speculate on it. As I’ve said several times before the biggest problems with tablets is the software, which either lacks functionality adapted to what a touch tablet offers as interaction methods or doesn’t bring something new to users. Either way, software is the way to go in the future so that touch screen tablets will have, you know, a future.

    It will be interesting to see how Google will play its cards as rumors about Apples tablet (which official seems to be called iSlate) tell us that half the effort is put on the software and iTunes transition to a cloud based service which will focus on multimedia, entertainment and media/news distribution but nothing is stopping Apple from switching to more advanced functionality to appeal to different types of customers (I’m thinking business users here: this is where the money is). I guess we’ll have to wait and see what will happen next. What do you thing about 2010 from touch tablets point of view?