“‘We believe Apple’s lead in the tablet market will prove difficult to close by the onslaught of competing products coming over the next several quarters,’ he writes in a note to clients issued early Monday. ‘Ultimately, we expect the slew of upcoming competition to fall flat from a user experience standpoint while struggl[ing] to materially undercut the iPad on price,'” P.E.D. reports.
P.E.D. reports, “‘What’s troubling for competitors,’ writes Whitmore, ‘is Apple’s growing scale advantages and leverage with the supply chain.’ Not only is Apple the largest buyer of FLASH by a wide margin, he says, accounting for 20%-25% of the world’s supply, but it has locked down much of the world’s touch screen manufacturing capacity.”
Read more in the full article, which includes a pie chart of the iPad’s bill of materials, here.