Todd Bishop

Steven Sinofsky this morning at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference.

LOS ANGELES -- Is Microsoft giving up on the Tablet PC? No way, says Windows chief Steven Sinofsky, who spent part of his time here this morning expressing the company's continued belief in the market.

The comments were notable in light of the dust-up over Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie's offhanded remark last week about Tablet PCs being a "niche" product. But will they be enough to placate Tablet PC enthusiasts?

Sinofsky raised the subject this morning on stage at the company's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, when discussing  the new touch-related features in Windows 7. Here's what he said.

"Touch, of course, goes way back to our work on the Tablet PC, which continues to be an extremely important opportunity for developers, and a great way to express new and unique scenarios, and a great way to have new types of applications in software. And so we're very excited to continue to bring forward the Tablet PC, to continue to improve it. And we actually have a whole bunch of new work in recognizers and expanding that around the world, but then building on top of that, we'll expand it with the role of touch. And so, as you'll see, this becomes a big opportunity for everybody, across a whole different set of dimensions."

However, the company didn't demonstrate any new Tablet PC-specific features on stage. I'll be prowling the show floor here at the conference later today, and I'll report back on anything notable along these lines.