[minthd]

With regards to the tablet, the killer app is the big screen. Once you know people use their phone on the sofa and bed(and Apple surely did know that) plus the fact that people prefer large screens(They also did know that), the tablet usecase is simple.

The only question why did nobody release something before them. Could have been luck. Could have been that they worked on a tablet long before.Could have been Apple's amazing supply chain Could have been some other business reason. But i think it was just a matter of time till someone releasing a tablet.

And btw ,nokia had a device similar to the tablet a few years before the ipad(and even before the iphone), but they didn't made a product of it.

[mercer]

I think the iPad did well partly for the same reasons that the iPhone did well despite not being the first 'smartphone': an easy, slick user interface and decent/great hardware. The fact that the iPad had tons of apps (which the iPhone didn't) probably helped.

Another factor might be timing. The iPhone, and by extension other smartphones, laid the groundwork for making it socially more acceptable to use these kinds of devices. I vividly recall being a bit embarrassed to pull out my geeky 'PDA' in the dumbphone days, and I felt much less of that when I got the iPad (while none of the people around me had one).