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The Tablet wars remind me of the Search and Browser wars post Y2K and this next year is going to be very confusing for the $300 or less tablet/eReader/iPod buyer. Everyone has something on the market but no one company is offering the end user a 100% solution. After much pain and product flops his market will eventually level out with plenty of options available for 90% of the market.
Apple and the cell industry did a great job of conditioning users to like what they got regardless. It appears that even Apple is going to dive into the 7" market with either a really big Touch or a really small iPad. Either way Apple will end up setting benchmarks the rest of the industry will struggle to match.
Amazon threw a huge monkey wrench into the tablet market by proving that most buyers will go for content rich, simplified, user friendly devices driven by locked down older technology. I picked up a KF because it was inexpensive and I had a few gift cards from the holidays. It has served me well as an e-reader / internet appliance. Amazon got a whole lot of things right but the User Experience suffers for the lack of a decent centralized sync point to get non-amazon, user content, on and off the device.
Google beat the industry to market with the next generation model and may have cracked the paradigm. Not a bad move from a marketing stand point since they will be in full blown production and on the shelves with accessories for the "Back To School" shopping season. They managed to undercut the impact of any KF upgrade into an "Us Too" press release. Google also applied max pressure on Apple by laying down a pretty impressive $200 price point for a high quality device.
The remaining 10% will of course continue to help the industry push forward by demanding SD slots, better batteries, Dolby Surround, HDMI and more pixels.
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