On the Surface, Microsoft's "Kludgey" Tablet is Hardly Competition, Says HP

Microsoft's hardware partners continue to take potshots at the company's Surface tablet. Last week, Acer warned Microsoft that delving into hardware is like "hard rice and "is not so easy to eat" (no joke, though something may have been lost in translation), and now HP is piling on the criticism, calling Surface a "slow" and "kludgey" solution. HP credited the press for hyping up a tablet that otherwise isn't very competitive.
"I'd hardly call Surface competition," Todd Bradley, head of HP's PC business, told IDG Enterprise in an interview, according to CiteWorld.com. "[Reason] one, very limited distribution. It tends to be slow and a little kludgey as you use it. It's expensive. Holistically, the press has made a bigger deal out of Surface than what the world has chosen to believe."
HP's last real attempt at the consumer tablet market was the ill-fated TouchPad, a promising webOS tablet that was perhaps priced too high to woo buyers away from the iPad. These days, HP is more focused on enterprise slates, and that isn't about to change.
"We're not entering the consumer tablet fray any time soon," Bradley added. "We'll be doing something next year, but you won't see a consumer tablet from HP before Christmas. You'll see convertibles that are focused on how you use the device, keyboard, clamshell."
Bradley also expressed interest in getting into the highly competive phone business, but hasn't yet formulated a strategy.