As you may have heard, Apple revealed the iPad 2 today, an update to their shockingly successful iPad last year. As expected, there aren't any major changes to this new iPad, but the iterative improvements are impressive enough to propel Apple even further past the supposed competition. While you might interpret my use of the word "supposed" as clearly revealing a bias towards Apple, the fact of the matter is that considering any of the new tablets true competitors to the iPad smacks of forced impartiality. Motorola may have the single product on the market that is comparable, but neither it nor the list of products that have been announced well in advance of their release are any more compelling than the host of MP3 players that once sought to be considered in the same league as Apple.
It should be obvious from our article last week detailing the woes of the Motorola Xoom that the Xoom doesn't even stack up well against the current iPad. The lack of a compelling story, an accessible retail channel, competitive pricing or an app ecosystem renders the Xoom a novelty product for Google to test its tablet wares. All of those are major flaws that don't even address the weight of the Xoom (heavier than iPad 1) or the bizarre nature of a 16:10 aspect ration screen. A 16:10 aspect ratio might be slightly better for watching movies (though it would still require letterboxing for most 16:9 movies), but it isn't better for anything else. The wide hold required for landscape use is no picnic, nor is the weight imbalance while using it in portrait. Apple made sure to highlight one of the Xoom's weaknesses we pointed out by contrasting their 65,000 iPad-specific apps with the 100 currently attributed to Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Of course, as the reviews poured in on Thursday last week, it became clear that the Xoom was a solid effort by Google, Motorola and Verizon but not a recommended product over the iPad.
So if the only Honeycomb tablet on the market can't compare with the first iPad, what would happen if Apple significantly improved the iPad and put it on the market? That's exactly what happened today, and Apple is shipping the new iPad next Friday, March 11. What's the answer to the question, though? The answer is that Apple has just taken another quantum leap in front of hopeful competitors. The new iPad makes the original look bloated, the same way an old iPod seems curiously large today. At these dimensions, even thinner than the iPhone 4, the new iPad is now in a different world in terms of compact, but functional, design. What's more, the listed performance improvements through hardware and software take an already fast product and turbo-charge it past anything Motorola, HP, RIM, Samsung or HTC can get on the market this year.
So what do you get when you combine superior hardware with an already-dominant app ecosystem? You get a category leader unwilling to cede its place in the market. The iPad is the new iPod, at least for the time being, and nothing any of the other manufacturers can do will change that. RIM and HP can't even get their products to market, but even once they do they'll be met with a lack of interest and without any convincing selling points. No wonder that after the "Year of the iPad," Apple is playfully calling this the "Year of the iPad 2."