Tablet PCs seem to be the next big thing. After Apple’s smartphone revolution with their iPhone, it seems the next big market revolution might be the Tablet PCs.

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft introduced one of the Tablet PCs – a prototype of the HP Slate – last week on the CES 2010. In his presentation the HP Slate is of course running Windows 7, what else, but there are rumors it might also be shipped with Google’s Android. We suppose Amazon’s Steve Bezos will not really like it, because Steve Ballmer showed the HP Slate running the PC Kindle application.

Dell seems also be ready to enter the Touch PCs’ market with the Dell Slate. Gizmodo.de got photos of a prototype of Dell’s Slate. Dell’s Slate has a 5-inch screen, most likely an OLED, a SIM slot and a 5 megapixel camera.

If Apple was a typical tech company they would also have showed something to the public on the CES, but Apple isn’t. Anyway there are enuff rumors floating around about Apple’s Touch-Mac – rumored to be named Apple iSlate. According to Reuters Apple might be launching the iSlate in Q2/2010. It is expected to have a 10 or 11-inch display and a aluminium case. TheStreet.com reports that Apple’s Slate will be shipped with a P A Semi CPU, instead of Intel based Atom CPUs. This could be also the reason, why Atom CPU has been removed from Mac OS X Snow Leopard’s latest update 10.6.2. It is widely expected that Apple will announce the iSlate on Januar 27th, 2010.

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD interviewed Mr. Podfather Prefather Jon Rubinstein of Palm at the CES. Although he seems to have been highly involved in the development of Apple’s iPhone back in the days when he was Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, he said he never used an iPhone. Well… All in all he wasn’t telling too much, but when Kara asked him, if Palm will do a Tablet aswell, Rubinstein answered: “(..) we designed webOS to scale and it could be used in different form factors.”