How do you see that working out though? I believe in the Euro zone, the tablets are actually able to be used as phones.
I've not heard of that. Even if true -- and I'd be really stunned if a non-jailbroken iPad could be used as a phone, since the software has no support for it at all -- how does that affect anything? The point is that with the iPhone you could only use one if you subscribed to a carrier that had it; in the US that meant AT&T only. If you were in a Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, or local carrier (Metro PCS, Cricket, etc.) contract, you either had to pay for two contracts or go with whatever phones your carrier actually had. This was especially true if you were a company or a family that had a contract with someone besides AT&T because the switching cost was huge and, commonly, not worth it.
With the iPad it doesn't matter what mobile carrier you have, you can buy an iPad without changing cell plans. Apple specifically set it up so that even if you buy an iPad with cellular data hardware you still don't have to get a contract with a carrier: cell data is a la carte, with the power to buy one month at a time, turning it on and off from within the OS as you wish. If you get the wifi-only version you can tether it to whatever cell phone you want (via wifi), including your Android phone.
in addition, several of the tablets stateside are available with a carrier with a reduced fee with a 2 year contract including the Xoom and the iPad.
That's true of the Xoom but it's not true of the iPad 2: there are no discounts on the hardware for buying a cell contract. The price you pay at Best Buy is the price you pay at the Verizon store is the price you pay at Walmart is the price you pay on Amazon, with only tiny differences. You
can buy a postpaid cell data contract from AT&T for the iPad, but it has no effect on the price of the iPad, you just get slightly cheaper data.
Point is you can buy an iPad anywhere and your cell carrier doesn't matter, just like with the iPod. When the iPod came out there were plenty of mp3 players that had better features -- more space, radios, bigger displays, etc. -- and plenty of mp3 players at a better price, yet they went on to take 85% of the market very, very quickly. The two primary reasons -- superior user experience and the iTunes music store -- hold true for the the iPad as well. And this time, unlike with the iPod, Apple actually managed to launch the product almost a full year before any other manufacturers had tablets in the same realm.
Don't forget the Apple Stores, either: the company is extremely good at encouraging you to put your hands on their products while you look around at all of the other people there who are smiling and playing with their products, and they make the purchase incredibly easy: no need to go to a cash register (there are none), a friendly salesperson will take your credit card, swipe it through their iPod Touch, and if you've bought anything from Apple before, email you the receipt while you walk out the door with your new product in hand.
Whether the iPad is the
best tablet is a fair issue for debate, but it is by far the best selling and, imo, will remain so for at least the next 2 years. The sales "war" -- at least in the near term -- was won a year ago.
