Is it possible that Microsoft founder Bill Gates, long a proponent of tablet computers, feels that the iPad is the wave of the future? And how does this tie in to the Apple iPhone, the main competitor for Windows Mobile?

Bnet, the business news website, has released an interview with Gates in which he states that the iPad is not such a great advance over other tablet computers that use Microsoft products, though he did express a bit of envy for some of the iPhone applications.

In the interview by Brent Schlender, Gates – who predicted back in 2001 that tablet computers

would become the most popular computers in only 5 years (a prediction that did not prove to be true) – was not very impressed with the new iPad.

Gates stated that even though he personally considers “touch as well as electronic digital reading” to be the next great advance, he firmly believes that computers with “a combination of voice, pen and keyboard” such as a netbook computer, will remain the standard in portable devices.

Gates has a long history of promoting voice recognition technologies; at the 1998 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Seattle, he gave the audience a peek at a voice-driven machine, then offered the suggestion that by 2011, computers would come with face and voice recognition software already installed.

The iPad and iPhone are both based entirely on touch technology, without the need for a stylus or keypad, but Gates remains unimpressed with either Apple product.

Gates insists that there’s nothing about either the iPhone or the iPad that makes him sit up and say “Oh, I wish Microsoft had something like that” though he will admit that he feels that Microsoft should have moved into the Apple applications arena when it first came on the scene.

The iPhone, introduced in 2007, became one of the fastest selling portable electronic devices of all time, particularly after Apple started offering discounts in June of that year; Gates admits that “Microsoft did not adequately cover” the iPhone market, a remarkable confession from a man who pushed Microsoft into the mobile communications and portable computer markets.

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform has been quietly replaced as the number one platform for smart phones by the new iPhone; no numbers have been officially released regarding the decline in the number of licenses sold in the last fiscal year for Windows Mobile, but there have been several major desertions by such well-known companies as HTC and Google, whose new Android phone does not use the Windows system.

Marketers and retailers are clearly betting that the possibilities with Apple’s new iPad systems are limitless and that there will be a repeat of the success of such Apple blockbusters as iTunes and the App Store.

The battle between iPad and Windows-based tablets is already heating up, with the city council in Cambridge issuing a denial that it had set aside money to purchase several iPads for city councillors as a way to reduce the amount of paper they were using. The Cambridge city council stated that the reports were inaccurate and that the tablets being considered would run on Windows-based software. www.ipadreviews.co.uk