iPad 3 with iOS 5 debuts as Feds probe HTC Android, HP TouchPad burns
Unlike its three-inch counterpart, Apple’s iOS-based iPad tablet lacks substantial competition in marketshare terms. That gives the iPad 3, with iOS 5 in tow, the all clear to debut without having to fight for tablet dominance in the minds of most consumers. Android based tablets have flooded the market this year, but unlike with Android phones, have yet to amount to more than a collective minority footprint. That’s on top of other tablets like the HP TouchPad having made almost no market impact. And now the news gets worse on the Android tablet front as one of its key cogs, HTC, is being investigated by the U.S. government as a result of the infringement lawsuit filed by Apple.
The move comes on top of a similar move with regards to Android tablet maker Samsung. As such, rather than the iPad 3 launching to no realistic competition, the iPad 3 could reach its release date with literally no competition in stores.
Whether Apple has enough legal juice to get various Android tablets and phones legally banned from the market is still up in the air. Rather than that draconian move, Apple could instead opt for a financial settlement which would seek to disable the hardware vendors monetarily instead.
There’s also the thorny issue of just when Apple plans to launch the iPad 3. All of Apple’s history says March of 2012, as the company has a strong tendency to release each new generation of its mobile products a calendar year apart. But that’s largely gone out the window in 2011, with everything from the iPhone to even the MacBook Air seeing generational revisions at surprising times of year. With the iPad 2 having been a mere middling update over the original, many have pointed to a late 2011 launch of an “iPad 3″ which would effectively be the “next-gen iPad” which Apple must have been working on since the launch of the iPad 1, but simply wasn’t ready last March and so the market was given an evolutionary update instead…
Of course Apple doesn’t tend to launch major new hardware any later in the year than September, so the iPad 3 clock is ticking if it’s going to happen in 2011. Such a move would see Apple one-upping its own existing product at a time when there’s effectively no competition to motivate Apple to do so. But then Apple has rarely paid much attention to what its competitors are doing; the company regularly revamped its iPod in major and often risky ways throughout the early and mid 2000s despite no market threat from competing MP3 players.
As such it’s reasonable to expect Apple to continue pushing the envelope with the iPad. And since it couldn’t really do that earlier this year with the iPad 2, it’s not a stretch to look for it do attempt to make up for it with a major iPad 3 overhaul before the year is over.
As for the legal wars with Android hardware manufacturers, it’s of note that Apple has gone hard after them while leaving other copycats like HP and its TouchPad alone. On the one hand, the TouchPad was a near-guaranteed flop (as evidenced by the latest round of desperation price cuts), so Apple may have simply decided to let it burn up of its own accord. But by targeting Android-based copycats specifically, Apple may be looking to seek revenge on Android developer Google, which pulled the Android OS out of its back pocket even as its CEO was sitting on Apple’s Board of Directors while Apple had been developing the iPhone.
With nearly every competing hardware developer having borrowed generously from the iPad and/or iPhone to varying degrees, Apple can pick and choose whom it drags into court. But with the U.S. International Trade Commission now probing HTC along with probing Samsung on the heels of Apple’s allegations, it suggests that there’s more to Apple’s allegations than a mere attempt at revenge. Even if Apple isn’t seeking to have certain Android-based devices banned from U.S. shelves, that doesn’t mean the ITC can’t take such steps unilaterally if it finds them to be illegally created products.
The impact of such a move would unquestionably be a bigger deal on the phone side, where Android phones (thanks to massive backing from all non-iPhone carriers over the past two years) have made a beachhead. Contrast that with the tablet side where, thanks to the lack of carrier influence one way or the other, Android tablets have barely put a dent in iPad marketshare. But still, it puts Apple in the position of rolling out an iOS 5-clad iPad 3, if not now then in the spring, with some of its would-be competitors missing from shelves entirely as opposed to merely being missing from consumer consideration. Here’s more on the iPad 3 and iOS 5.
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