The most amusing thing to me is, that despite the iPad's dominance, all these companies will make more money with that competition rather than without it. The current tablet category simply wouldn't exist without Apple. The iPad has created the mindshare which has lead to opening the market for alternatives and it's created the business case for others to develop their own OSes (Google, HP, RIM).

It's a chance for a lot of manufacturers to move on form the crappy netbook mire they've been stuck in for the past two or three years.

EDIT. Except RIM. I expect that their tablet is going to carve some deep loses into their balance sheet. IMO, they should really cut their loses right now and abandon the proprietary tablet and instead focus on how to better leverage iOS and Android devices to their advantage. HP's chances with WebOS on a tablet are marginal, RIM's with the Playbook? Non-existant. If they sell ten thousand units by the end of 2011 I'll be flabbergasted.