Last month, when Bill Gates finally unveiled the much-promised era of the Tablet PC, I couldn’t wait to see the new twist to the lexicon Microsoft would now provide. The buzz word according to my crude dip-stick test is “corridor warrior”. I couldn’t find one preview, review, post-view or point of view on the Tablet PC, which didn’t snuck in that term. But there’s good reason to flog it, as “corridor warrior” clearly defines the early adopter segment for the Tablet PC.

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Certainly, the November 7 release from Microsoft’s Redmond HQ in Washington, announcing the launch of Tablet PCs, quickly slips in the catch-phrase. “In many companies, employees spend much of their day rushing between meetings, making presentations, and holding client conferences — for these workers, not much time is actually spent at a desk. These “corridor warriors” spend little of their day at their desktop computers and often find that their notebook computers are of limited use in situations where there’s little opportunity or elbowroom to boot up a traditional laptop”.

Of course, the groundwork for seeding the term began a long while ago. I suspect, the Chief Usage Officer at Microsoft for pushing the popularity of “corridor warriors” was Jeff Raikes. As group vice-president of the Productivity and Business Services Group at Microsoft, he was one of the first people in Microsoft to tote a Tablet PC — and tout it.

In an inhouse interview at Microsoft on June 25, 2002, Raikes is asked a leading question on the difference between knowledge workers and information workers. Raikes replies: “We still believe that knowledge workers, and the work they do, are very important, but one of the things that we’re seeing is the expanding use of digital tools by a far broader range of people. We view information workers as people who have an active role in the business flow, information flow or business process. Also, information workers are often more mobile than the traditional knowledge worker. Some are “corridor warriors” who go to lots of meetings, but generally stay within their building or campus.”

In all fairness, I must point out one bit of trivia. Microsoft didn’t invent term “corridor warriors”. According to Wordspy.com, the term seems to have evolved from “corridor cruisers”, first used in a March 1993 article in Computerworld on mobile professionals.

But as Microsoft knows well, never underestimate the power of ‘the’ word. In this case, by definitively defining the market segment, “corridor warriors” is not only useful for potential users to conceptualise applications, but also handy for salespersons pushing the Tablet PC technology.

Secondly, its generic enough to accommodate a wider segment of potential users under its umbrella. In recent articles on Tablet PCs I have seen likely users defined as healthcare workers, police and emergency service providers, people in the transportation business and even military and homeland security users. Many of them in fact, are people who don’t work offices with corridors. But while the mobile worker was already an icon of the wireless technology, with “corridor warriors” Microsoft has now managed to appropriate a whole “new” segment of users of what is still only another form of mobile technology.

Of course, the best part of a smart buzz-phrase is that other influential people, who want to sound smart, take up the usage and pass it around for you. So far, I have counted Gartner analysts, media mavens, and nearly all CEOs of Tablet PC manufacturing firms adding “corridor warriors” to their vocabulary. Microsoft should be pleased: It has evangelised “corridor warriors”.