They can send a man to the moon (or at least they could 40 years ago). Why can’t they make a tiny computer people want to buy?

Cell phone, laptop and desktop PC markets are all well established, with dominant players in each category raking in billions in sales. But in the world of mobile computers, the field for laptops that are bigger than cell phones but smaller than regular laptops is still wide open. A shockingly large number of companies have invested millions of dollars developing products in this category. They’ve shipped dozens of gadgets hyped as the Next Big Thing. But the buying public has responded with indifference.

Many observers blame this indifference airplanes, restaurants, meetings, around the house — where tiny mobile computers are ideal. The problem is price, performance and user experience. To date, products have been way too expensive, slow, clunky and awkward to use.

Eventually, somebody is going to get it right. And when they do, the tiny computer market will get huge.

Since Microsoft announced the “yeah, I said it — Apple! will ship the first ever successful small computer. Call it the Newton on Crack (or, more accurately, on Mac).

Here’s what happened in September.

a lot of “ifs” here — then Palm has a shot at selling a few of these to existing Treo owners.

The Foleo has zero chance of dominating the coming boom in tiny mobile computers.

Nokia

The Federal Communications Commission recently approved a new minitablet, nonphone device from Nokia that supports Bluetooth, WLAN and GPS. The approval was branded as “confidential,” so only the sketchiest of details are available on the product, which will almost certainly ship this year.