[dwaite]

That would be what is referred to as a market for lemons.

Apple tries extremely hard to be durably differentiated from products in the same category to avoid being dragged down in a price war to have cheap quality.

That in turn makes it hard for others to compete with them - you don't have differentiating features that would pull existing users off a mature product like iPad, and you can't come out with a cheaper product without discriminating consumers being concerned that it is fragile, clunky, and/or incomplete.