Will Microsoft's Mystery Meat Sit Well With Partners?

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Microsoft (MSFT) is making a mystery meat of an announcement on Monday in Los Angeles: few know what's going to be in it. That, of course, does not stop the media from opining.

The Associated Press posits that the announcement will be entertainment related. ZDNet said it's all about a tablet, but one that will compete with Amazon's (AMZN) Fire, not Apple's (AAPL) iPad. The International Business Times said that Microsoft, au contraire, will target Apple. Forbes, for its part, says maybe a tablet -- maybe content and cable related. It then asked readers if they "got any guesses?"

In an article called "Microsoft Is Doing Its Own Tablet. How Do You Like Them Apples?" All Things D says with a fair degree of conviction (if not sources) that it's going to be a tablet.

Let's go there for a moment, because All Things D is right to immediately lay out an appropriate question: since computer makers like Dell (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) have developed Windows-based tablets -- well, how will they respond to the competition?

Fox Business -- and many others -- simply regurgitated the supposed scoop about the tablet, without leaving space for that essential question.

The Seattle Times did well to go right there: "If Microsoft starts making its own branded tablets, that could be awkward for its relationships with its hardware partners, many of whom have shown off a variety of upcoming Windows 8 tablets."

How will everyone handle the fraught competition? That -- like the rest of it -- remains to be seen. Make no assumptions here.

At the time of publication, Fuchs had no positions in any of the stocks mentioned in this column.

Marek Fuchs was a stockbroker for Shearson Lehman Brothers and a money manager before becoming a journalist who wrote The New York Times' "County Lines" column for six years. He also did back-up beat coverage of The New York Knicks for the paper's Sports section for two seasons and covered other professional and collegiate sports. He has contributed frequently to many of the Times' other sections, including National, Metro, Escapes, Style, Real Estate, Arts & Leisure, Travel, Money & Business, Circuits and the Op-Ed Page.

For his "Business Press Maven" column on how business and finance are covered by the media, Fuchs was named best business journalist critic in the nation by the Talking Biz website at The University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Fuchs is a frequent speaker on the business media, in venues ranging from National Public Radio to the annual conference of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

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