Edible Apple

Apple’s iPad effectively resurrected a tablet market that was by all accounts littered with a succession of failed products. And while competitors have been able to compete with the iPhone – both in terms of user experience and market success – no one has really been able to challenge Apple’s iPad dominance in the least. From Motorola to RIM, companies are still struggling to compete with the original iPad, let alone the iPad 2.

Rumor has it that Apple this Fall was planning on releasing a new iteration of the iPad. Whether it was going to be positioned as the iPad 3 or perhaps an iPad Pro of sorts remains unknown. Apple was reportedly pushing for an acceleration in its iPad release schedule to further cement the iPad’s lead as the premier tablet in the market. Essentially, Apple was planning to aggressively market and upgrade the iPad to prevent competitors from catching up in the way they did with the iPhone.

Now Apple’s plans for an iPad 3 were temporarily delayed amidst reports of poor yields in the device’s planned Retina Display. As a result, the launch of Apple’s next-gen tablet was pushed back to early 2012.

With that serving as a backdrop, J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz writes that even with iPad 3 prototypes already making the rounds in the supply chain, Apple is in no rush to get it out in the marketplace as soon as possible.

“In our view, Apple should be in no rush,” Moskowitz writes. “The other tablet entrants have stumbled so far, and that trend-line could persist deep into 2012.”

To wit, Motorola Xoom sales have been flat with RIM recently announcing at their earnings conference call last week that they had sold a paltry 200,000 PlayBooks – a figure which pales in comparison to the 9.25 million iPads Apple sold during the June quarter.

But one company with a tablet looming on the horizon is Amazon, who leaked details of their Android-based tablet just a few weeks ago. Now one advantage Amazon has over other tablet entrants is it’s access to content like books, movies and the like. In that regard, Amazon has a leg-up on companies like Samsung and Motorola who have had to rely on other companies to harness media content for users.

To that end, Moskowitz writes: “Amazon’s Kindle may not be a harbinger of the company’s future success in tablets, in our view. Until we see how Amazon fares, we think the next potential threat to Apple’s tablet dominance is not until late 2012 when Windows 8-based tablets could hit the market.”

The operative word there being ‘potential’.

Now regarding iPad 3 features that have been sprouting up lately, we recently reported that in addition to a Retina Display, the iPad 3 may carry a new battery pack that will be thinner and lighter than the one Apple uses on the iPad 2. What’s more, there have also been a smattering of rumors pointing to an LTE-enabled iPad as well.

via AppleInsider