I suspect that you do need a reasonable app ecosystem to get a tablet off the ground, but that once you've got the bases covered the difference between 100k app

I suspect that you do need a reasonable app ecosystem to get a tablet off the ground, but that once you've got the bases covered the difference between 100k apps and 400k apps becomes largely academic. If you've got a solid browser, clients for email, Facebook, and Twitter, and a reasonable ebook, movie, music and photo apps you've covered the needs of 90% of your potential buyers. Oh and Angry Birds, of course. Which is why I expect Apple to continue to own the top end of the tablet market but continue to lose overall marketshare to the greater diversity of increasingly acceptable Android alternatives. I particularly think that the 7" form factor is going to be more than a niche and the pain Android developers have suffered up front in coding to multiple screen sizes and form factors is going to pay off.