Acer chairman JT Wang, thinks that the iPad will drop from its current near 100% market share to somewhere around 20% or 30%. Like Asus, Acer's netbook business is feeling the pain of Apple's entry into the "third device category" with iPad. Since Apple is pretty much alone in that space right now -- despite a 10 year Tablet PC head start we should point out -- any form of real competition will begin splitting the market.
The question is will Acer, Asus, and the like compete the same way they've chose to with netbooks -- using ultra cheap, near zero-margin processors, operating systems, and commodity parts to grab tons of market share and leave the profit share for Apple, or will they try to go toe-to-toe with Cupertino on user experience and hardware?
Will the "pad" market end up being more like laptops, with netbooks on one end and MacBooks on the other, or more like smartphones where Apple, HTC, Motorola, and others all battle it out to be the best?
