Of the hundreds of millions of designs of iPads and other popular mobile devices at this year's CES, the one that seemed most out of place was "Sky and Water I," drawn by Dutch artist M.C. Esher in 1938.

There it was, on the same table at the Lux Mobile booth as designs featuring Marilyn Monroe and a host of other movie stars and modern popular icons.

Then there was the Esher-designed iPad covered with 18,000 Swarovski crystals that had been dipped in 24 karat gold -- a limited edition case that sold for a cool $3,000.

As you can see, it's beautiful. I've got no problem with that. It's just that pairing Esher with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Elvis and Hello Kitty seems, well, discongruous.

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The actual Consumer Electronics Show for 2011 has barely gotten started and already a few things are very apparent.

One of those things is demonstrated in this photo of yet another proposed iPad killer, the Motion Tablet PC. Just read the hype line underneath the name of the product: "Meticulously designed, thoroughly developed and purposefully built for business." Personally, I find that overwordingly overwordy.

Here's some more observations:

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Back in the early years of Saturday Night Live, Steve Martin did a simple skit in which he would peer quizzically into the camera for a few moments, then ask, "What the Hell is that?" He would wait a few moments, waiting for a response, then ask again, "What's that danged thing doing here? How did that get here? What the hell is that?" He then draws Bill Murray into the scene, who joins him in observing this off-screen wonderment. Each makes observations like, "I would not mess with that thing," then returning to the original question, "What the Hell is it?"

I think I might have figured out what they were looking at. It's something from a major manufacturer I found at CES last night. Perhaps it's a hat. Or a speaker. Maybe a giant, opaque bong. You try to figure it out before you hit the link to find the answer.

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Why unveil an iPad Killer when you can display four of them at the same time? That's what Jonney Shih, chairman of ASUSTek, did yesterday in a CES press conference at the Aria Resort and Hotel in Las Vegas.

Thus begins the Year of the Keyboardless Computer. Last year, Apple went it alone with the iPad at a time when all the other computer manufacturers insisted that everybody wanted physical keyboards and styluses with their large-scale mobile devices. Now that Apple has sold millions of iPads, everyone's jumping on the bandwagon.

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Everybody wants to make an iPhone killer. Companies are coming out of the woodwork to fashion their own Android-based phone. Hewlett Packard paid a billion dollars to buy Palm for its mobile operating system. Microsoft is betting the farm on its own variety of mobile operating systems.

But no matter how sophisticated the smartphone market gets, no matter how much more market share the Android operating system attains, there's no single phone manufacturer likely to supplant Apple from the gross numbers of devices sold that run its iOS operating system.

And that's all the phone manufacturers care about. Motorola, Nokia, Sony Erickson, Palm, RIM (Blackberry), Samsung -- they all want to be where Apple is. That's why they all keep announcing their own versions of iPhone killers.

All this in-fighting reminds me of Dragonball Z.

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