Is the tablet revolution brewing?

With Apple's iSlate launch imminent and companies from Dell to Verizon talking tablet or touch screen computing, some are already deeming 2010 the year of the tablet, according to a variety of sources. Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Motorola and Lenovo Group were among the companies showing off thin, touch screen computing devices at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. With Apple's iSate due out this month, these new portable devices, which are packed with multimedia and web-browsing capabilities, are aiming for Apple and trying to fit into the electronic matrix by slotting between smartphones and laptops. "There's going to be tablets of every form and kind coming," Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of Nvidia - which makes graphics chips - told Reuters. Huang added that a number of new devices based on Nvidia's Tegra chip are on the horizon, going so far as to call 2010 the beginning of a "tablet revolution." Microsoft - whose Windows 7 will be running many of these entries - believes that the touch technology seen on the tablets will spread to many other PCs. Rising consumer expectations, increasingly affordable consumer electronics and advances in technology are pushing the touch platform along said Bill Buxton, a principal researcher at Microsoft.