Laptop Thoughts: The iPad Will Rule The US Tablet Market

"But did Apple just destroy the US tablet market in the same way? Are manufacturers really going to invest millions upon millions of dollars in R&D and marketing when consumers are buying the iPad by the millions? Is the US tablet market dead?"

Tablets, even slate tablets, have been around for a very long time, so I do not think that the iPad has preemptively killed the US market in any fashion. I believe that the iPad will certainly dominate for quite some time, as the tablet market was about as stagnant as the phone market was when the iPhone was introduced, but competition for the iPad already exists in the form of netbooks, and I am fairly sure that other major manufacturers will also look into entering the market with their own slates. The iPad certainly has a lead in the market but just as they drew from the resources and lessons learned with the iPhone, other manufacturers already have numerous tools, largely from the phone market, which can be used to compete.