ap3x :
Not sure if this is them being a pioneer. I guess in the literal way yea but this has largely been looked at in the industry as them rushing to market with a product to try and beat Apple to the market with the rumors iWatch. Problem is that it is just a rumor.
I suspect this is something they felt they
had to get to market first to avoid another $1 billion infringement decision against them in the future. The judge specifically prohibited them from showing the jury
touchscreen phone prototypes they were working on before the iPhone (because they missed a filing deadline). That's why the Samsung attorney said "what's the point of even having this trial?" if that evidence were disallowed. So they needed to protect themselves in a way that was judge-proof and technicality-proof. If they're first to market, that's incontrovertible.
If you think about it, computers are going to continue to get smaller. For a while (since the PDA days, before the iPhone) I've been saying that your PC was going to shrink down to something you can carry around in your pocket. If you project it even further into the future, your PC is going to shrink down to something you can strap to your wrist or wear as a ring. So while the first attempts may be clumsy and not very impressive, this is the direction PCs will be going in the coming decades.
(Yes I know the screen is too small. Fortunately people have been working on transmitting the screen contents to a remote display over wifi or widi. My prediction is that in the future, your PC will be in your pocket or on your wrist, and your "tablet" will just be a display which connects to it wirelessly. Your "laptop" will just be a display and keyboard which connect to it wirelessly.)