Agreed. The key factor would seem to be more, better and cheaper competition both in terms of direct competition (other 10" tablets) and similar but slightly di

Agreed. The key factor would seem to be more, better and cheaper competition both in terms of direct competition (other 10" tablets) and similar but slightly different products (7" tablets such as the Fire and the Nexus 7). I'd expect that the iPad Mini will have some positive impact for Apple (some of those looking at smaller and / or cheaper tablets will find it appealing) but there will also be a negative effect from the continuing improvements in the iPad's competitors, especially as the Android tablet ecosystem improves. Essentially we seem to be heading to the place most sensible people predicted a couple of years back - a few big players sharing a market rather than a single one owning it. I see a lot of people still thinking that Android is going to crush the iPad but I don't see why this would be. 20 years ago Windows crushed the Mac because that was the only easy way to interact with someone - to use the same OS and the same programmes. Today people will be reading this on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, Android and a whole bunch of other stuff. I don't get why anyone thinks, in an era where the desktop OS is more diverse than it's ever been, why tablets would standardise on a single OS. It seems more natural that the natural state of affairs will be diversity and if that's the case so long as Apple keep making tablets people like, the iPad will continue to thrive. For those who say Apple can't compete on low margin, high volume, I'd suggest that they have just so far chosen not to as they've been able to go high margin, high volume. Right now Apple have the highest margins on hardware (perhaps the only margins on hardware) but also have the biggest music sales network, one of the biggest digital video sales / rental networks and a digital book sales network. It may be that to stay competitive in the game they have to sacrifice some of the up front revenue but remember they are still very able to compete on the media sales stuff that comprises pretty much all of Amazon's business model and a fair portion of Google's. The only thing that seems certain to me is that we as consumers are going to do well out of the competition, the rest is up for grabs and I suspect will be for many years to come.