In the smartphone world the device to beat is of course the iconic iPhone, and now in the tablet world it appears that the tablet to beat is the Apple iPad, and it looks like Microsoft will be shoving out a few Apple iPad rival devices in the near future.

That near future being CES 2011, according to an article over on Intomobile by Kelly Hodgkins and by way of The New York Times, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, will apparently unveil several tablet devices during his keynote at CES 2011 and those tablets will include devices from both Dell and Samsung.

Word has it that the Samsung tablet will be a tad thicker than the Apple iPad, and be a 10 inch device with a slide out keyboard for easier typing and rumoured to run Windows 7 OS although word also has it that there may just be another device there that will run Windows 8 OS.

Apparently an unnamed Microsoft employee has said “the company was encouraging partners to build applications for these devices that use HTML5, the Web programming language.”

The anonymous source also added that “the applications would not be sold in an app store, as with the Apple iTunes model, but Microsoft will encourage software partners to host the applications on their own Web sites, which will then be highlighted in a search interface on the slate computers.”

So it would appear that Microsoft isn’t happy with challenging iOS and Android with Windows Phone 7 but is looking to challenge Apple and their iPad in the tablet stakes as well. Do you think Microsoft can come up with a tablet that will rival the Apple iPad?