Apple iPad still has no competitors

Author's Note: Jim Dalrymple has been writing about Apple for over 15 years. You can read his articles on Twitter @jdalrymple and on The Loop's website.

Almost a year has passed since Apple launched the iPad, and less than a week left before the official introduction of the iPad 2, but so far they have no competition.

There are several good reasons for Apple’s success, as well as why its competitors have difficulty competing against the king of digital devices. It's all about the infrastructure, as well as the combination of manufactured devices and software. It should be noted, and the fact that competitors do not claim to first place.
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Let's look at it individually.


Apple didn't invent the tablet, but made it very popular and showed everyone how it fits into our lifestyle. Proof of this is the fact that every tablet, released after the appearance of the iPad, looks the same as it does.

Noteworthy is that every company that makes tablets doesn't try to make them better than an iPad. They are only trying to catch up. Apple has done its best to stay. the first number on the tablet market, but due to the lack of great competition, they will remain there for a long time.

There is a great saying in hockey: Do not run to where the puck is, but run to where it will be. Nobody is willing to bet on the direction in which the market will develop, everyone goes to a market that already exists, which is why Apple controls the puck.

And if someone manages to get out of the shadow of Apple, they will never be better. and will remain only the second number. But you need to fight for it right now.

All tablets are very similar, what else can a company do? This is not an operating system. Regardless of how good Google’s Honeycomb is, the fact remains that almost every company wants to use this OS.

On the other hand, Apple controls both the production of devices and the creation of an operating system. When Apple succeeds in creating iOS, it shares this success with its users.

There are two more companies in the tablet market that produce devices and an operating system: HP and RIM. However, the problem is that they have not done anything yet.

RIM last September released the PlayBook ; in January, she released the PlayBook 4G , and in February, the PlayBook 4G LTE, HSPA +, and WiMAX. So far, none of this has gone on sale. I think that RIM is already worth starting to sell something .

HP has some interesting suggestions about webOS. Everyone claims that webOS has the greatest potential to become successful among consumers. During the presentation of its TouchPad, HP did not give any specific information on this subject, without mentioning any dates or prices.

Motorola has a Xoom , and although the reviews about it are good, they could still be better. Honestly, I don’t think that the Motorola tablet will attract more customers than the RAZR did.

Even if Apple’s competitors can create better devices and software, there’s another component that they cannot overcome — this is infrastructure.

Apple hasn't built an iPad in a year or two. The company has been working on it for almost a decade. Practically at the time when they started working on the iPad, they released the media portal iTunes, which to this day is dominant.

In iTunes, users can buy music, movies, TV shows, educational programs, as in a regular online store. Buy, download, sync and take away.

If you add the App Store to all of the above, then Apple is completely invulnerable. And it seems that Apple has everything you can wish for.

Over the next six months, iPad competitors will appear, but there will not be many of them. While competitors are releasing something similar to the iPad 1, Apple has an iPad 2 and is on its way to iPad 3 .

Apple has already thought of everything for years to come, how they will develop, and what to release. It is difficult to imagine that someone will overtake them in the near future.