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Shim said IDC estimates that Apple will sell four million to five million iPad tablets this year. That compares to an estimate of aloof 1.3 million Book PCs–only 170,000 of which will be slates. (Last year IDC says about 1 million tablets were sold, 125,000 of which were slates, as compared to about 875,000 that were convertible PCs).

Of course, the fact that Apple has unveiled the iPad book doesn’t guarantee its success. That said, it has come in at a lower-than-expected price and also has the advantage for almost cheap 3G data, albeit from AT&T. Although the aggregation has had a string of hits, it has also had products that either had only modest appulse (thinkMac Mini) or less (Apple TV).

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed a ancestor HP book running Windows 7. Microsoft, meanwhile, hasn’t given up on the tablet. In a video, embedded below, HP’s Phil McKinney says that the aggregation has been working on an entertainment-oriented slate for the past five years. With the accession of multitouch inWindows 7 the aggregation is hoping that a new bearing of tablets will hold more interest. I’m told the device is expected mid-year and uses an 8.9-inch display.

In an interview with CNET, Microsoft entertainment assemblage head Robbie Bach confirmed the video was genuine, but wouldn’t say where the project stands now. Microsoft is also exploring the notion of a dual-screen tablet, code-named Courier, a video of which leaked out early last year.

We don’t animadversion on them.”. We do a lot of those. “We do a lot of exploratory videos on a lot of different products,” Bach said in the interview, which took place at CES earlier this month. “The video that went around the Internet that was the so-called Courier is aloof another archetype of those.

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