Microsoft vies with Apple in device battle

A video at the Microsoft Global High-Tech Summit 2010 meeting in Santa Clara, Calif. Tuesday showed how devices such as a tablet and a credit card-shaped unit could be served data via cloud computing. Interviewed afterward, speaker Drew Gude, Microsoft director of U.S. High Tech & Electronics, said the future will include these types of devices.

[ Read the iPad questions Apple won't answer in InfoWorld. ]

"There's a ton of innovation going on right now in form factors," amongst Microsoft and hardware partners, he said. A Windows XP and Vista tablet already has been offered and a Windows 7-based slate device from HP recently was shown at the CES conference in Las Vegas last month,  Gude said.

"That video was intended be kind of glimpse of the future," where Microsoft has taken ideas like Microsoft Surface multi-touch technology and applied it to new types of surfaces and products, he said. Devices shown in the video are under development at Microsoft and could be on the market in the next three to 10 years, according to a Microsoft representative.

Microsoft can serve as an alternative to Apple on the device front, Gude acknowledged.