Hopefully you weren’t getting too excited about the Microsoft Courier — that fancy dual-screen tablet they’ve been somewhat secretly working on for quite some time. According to Gizmodo, the Courier will probably never see the light of day.

In their post, Giz states that executives at Microsoft have informed the Courier team that the project is no longer being supported. Gizmodo editors also reached out to Microsoft for comment and received the following response:

At any given time, we’re looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It’s in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.

Microsoft giveth, and they taketh away. To be fair, hardware isn’t necessarily their forte — and if the Courier ended up hitting retail shelves looking anything like those new Kin phones I think we all would’ve let out a collective groan. Really, though, it probably makes more sense for the guys Redmond to work on a device running Windows Phone 7 or Windows 7 Embedded — rather than pushing out a new device with yet another OS.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,544 other subscribers

Lee Mathews

Computer tech, blogger, husband, father, and avid MSI U100 user.

11 replies on “Microsoft pulling the plug on the Courier tablet?”

  1. Stupid MS buggers….

    Most exciting product for ages. I have been waiting for something with an arm chip like that which will fit in an inside coat pocket for ages.

    MS finally grew some and came up with a superb and exciting product. This was the one I was waiting for.

    Guess I am gonna give up and stick with my Sigmarion 3. Working on a CF extension cable at the moment so I can make a car mount that will connect audio, GPS and charger cables to it.

  2. The one really innovative product Microsoft came up with in the past 20 years, and they’re shutting down the project…

  3. OK, when i am command master jesus of the US… IP law will have to change to prevent vaporware. If the funding company aborts on the project, the IP rights revert to the designers who have the option to take it open source or seek to shop it for outside development.

  4. Well, I wish I could say that I was surprised… Actually I’m not surprised that they let the existence of the project leak in order to combat iPad hype, what i’m surprised at is that they came out with such a complete marketing kit for a product that wasn’t breathing and was considered nothing more than an internal research product… Or how much press it got for a product that was clearly not breathing yet.

    Oh well. Maybe someday their research will amount to something. Maybe not.

    For my two cents, I wasn’t all that hyped on it to begin with. It looked like it couldn’t figure out if it was pen based or touch based, with contradictory gesture support for both. From the slides and demo’s I saw it didn’t appear to have a clear vision of how to integrate the two input methods, or really even what to use the two screens for that would make the device so compelling. Really it looked like someone was showing off with potential features without really engineering solutions for them, or thinking out how they would work together beyond more than the conceptual level. Given that, and the new focus on Win Mobile 7, it’s hardly surprising that the project isn’t for release. At least that’s my take. Feel free to flame me freely.

    1. Indeed, it seemed like everything all in one but I don’t think the tech is there just yet. . . at least not at an affordable price point for mass consumers.

  5. I contend that Microsoft never intended to produce the Courier. It looked like classic FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about a future superior Microsoft product) targeting the iPad in an attempt to blunt some of the buzz. I don’t think it is a coincidence that this revelation comes a day after HP buys Palm (and the subsequent buzz about a potential WebOS-based tablet)

  6. Dissapointing =(. Considering all the hype surrounding this, they should think about making it.

Comments are closed.