Microsoft Courier Not Heading Into Production

Here's some remarkably bad news. It seems that the Microsoft Courier, the dual-screen digital journal with Tegra 2 inside, has been scrapped. According to the report from The Wall Street Journal, it seems that Microsoft executives informed the internal team working on the Courier that the project was no longer supported by Microsoft, and that it's been removed from future production. Of course, Microsoft had never officially come forward and publicly announced the Courier, but we know it existed.

The Courier first broke cover at the end of last year, and since then it's caught the love of tablet fans all over the place. The second time we got a real good look at the concept of the tablet, our interest was piqued considerably. It made it all worse when rumors broke that the dual-screen digital journal would be using Tegra 2 under the hood. Simply put, the Courier was one of the best conceptual ideas to come out of Redmond in a long time, and we're sad to see it go.

According to Corporate VP of Communications Frank Shaw, Microsoft is always testing devices, building them up from concepts, and that's exactly what the Courier was. Just a design, and at this time, Microsoft has no plans to build the Courier for a market release any time soon. Now, one would have to wonder if this has anything to do with the iPad at all, let alone the very idea of a webOS tablet. Is the competition just too much for Microsoft, that they figure staying out of the market is just a better idea? Or, is the Courier something that Microsoft built to make something better we haven't seen yet?

[via The Wall Street Journal]