There's a difference between being a failure and being dead, though. Non-phone PDAs weren't exactly failures (back in the day), and they aren't exactly dead (HP made two recently), but they're not a raging success now, either.

I think dedicated tablets and UMPCs are the odd men out between small laptops (especially convertibles) and PDAs/smart phones. This is even more true now that netbooks seem to have pushed the laptop boundaries smaller and cheaper.

I'm sure there are niches where a dedicated tablet or a UMPC is the best solution, but they don't tend to have the power and ease of input of a normal laptop and they're too big to carry in your pocket or purse or on your belt like a PDA. To make matters worse, they tend to be more expensive than either, too.

So somebody announcing a new UMPC doesn't provide proof that the market is thriving. Maybe they're just addressing the niche and figure they can do OK because there's less competition there.

If I had cash to burn, I'd probably get a UMPC for times when my PDA wasn't powerful enough but my laptop was too big, but I'm not Bill Gates, so I haven't. I think I'm in the majority there, too.

Steve