In the past, MSI often closely followed whatever Asus was doing, for example in the netbook market, but surprisingly it didn't follow Asus in tablet market.

MSI does have a few tablets, but it never joined the Honeycomb race with Asus and some much bigger names that include Samsung, Toshiba, LG, Lenovo and even Sony.

Sources close to the company are telling us that MSI has decided to wait for the tablet market to get more mature, and then join it. There is not enough money and viability for them to run at this path. A lot of Taiwan-based executives at MSI believe that having Windows 8 on tablets is a real opportunity for them, but only in late 2012, roughly a year from now.

Of course just as any other notebook manufacturer from Taiwan, MSI has a very high opinion about Apple and its iPad, as well as its success in ultrathin notebooks, but MSI didn't even want to join the initial ultrabook strategy launched by Intel.

MSI's answer to how to make money in volatile economy are gaming notebooks and we hear that for the most part, MSI is doing quite well with them. It seems tablet and ultrathin notebook markets are simply overcrowded and MSI is focusing on niche markets instead.