Tin box maker Michael Dell has admitted that he was surprised by the rise of the iPad.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal he said he could not see what Jobs' logic on flogging a keyboardless netbook would be. After all Tablets were not new, and Microsoft and others had been peddling them for years without any success.

If the great unwashed want Tablets, Dell said, then he will will give them tablet. They will be based around Android as Dell thinks that will eventually catch up to Apple.

He does not believe that tablets will kill off the PC and he has no plans to flog off that arm of his business. He thinks that the cloud has legs and so he is building data centres for that, just like everyone else.