With the Galaxy Note phones and tablets, Samsung has proved that there's still an appetite for pen-based input. So it's only natural to expect other companies to jump on the bandwagon, as evidenced by a few early prototypes I saw behind the scenes at CES. The problem is that few understand why Samsung's implementation works. For one, there's a place to put the pen in the design. If there's no holster for the stylus, you failed. Second, you have to think way beyond handwriting recognition and drawing to make pen computing compelling.

The Galaxy Note II, for example, lets you open apps by scribbling a single letter and enables users to hover over emails to see their contents. Competitors should be thinking about how to go a step further instead of including a pen just to say you have one.

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