"I think I've mentioned this once or twice before, but it bears repeating until it sinks in: the Apple iPad is not unique, nor necessarily the best of breed in the media tablet sector it is spearheading. And it ain't gonna help Apple shareholders any," Anders Bylund writes for The Motley Fool.
"Sure, the iPad will sell a few million units to the Apple faithful, of whom there are many. Being very little else than an oversized iPod Touch, or an extra-large iPhone without the phone, iPads will appeal to the same people who already use the minuscule versions," Bylund writes. "But there's a flash flood of competing products coming up... Hewlett-Packard, for instance, promises to present a tablet of its own that has been in development for five years, looks similar to the sleek iPad design, and gives you the full experience of a larger computer. This one has a customized Microsoft Windows 7 operating system and full Flash support."
Bylund writes, "The HP slate rocks an Intel Atom chip while the iPad runs on an ARM processor developed in-house by Apple... The iPad is a market-defining device, but not likely to remain a top choice in the market it created for very long. It'll cannibalize iPod sales and sink in a sea of choices... In the end, given these shortcomings the iPad will join the Apple TV in the footnotes of Apple's history."
