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Here are three facts: Apple iPads hold 75 percent of the tablet market. Apple sold 32.1 million iPads in the fiscal year ended Sept. 24. Apple has cash and investments exceeding $81.5 billion.
Now try to carve out a piece of the tablet pie for yourself. It's not so easy, is it?
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Consider some of the missteps to date: Hewlett-Packard, which paid $1.2 billion last year to acquire Palm to enter the market, scrapped sales of its HP TouchPad and held a clearance sale in the fourth quarter ending Oct. 31.
IDC, the market research firm, estimates Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP sold a million TouchPads, both at the original price of $499 and the fire sale one of $99. Trouble is, researcher IHSiSuppli broke down TouchPads and estimated they cost $319 to produce.
So perhaps HP will be able to be slightly profitable or break even on TouchPad sales, although it might have to had to pay big retailers like Best Buy and BJ's Wholesale Club for slow-moving merchandise.
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But how about the share price? In the weeks between then-CEO Leo Apotheker announcing TouchPad's end with HP's poor third-quarter results and his Sept. 22 firing, they slipped 27.3 percent, costing shareholders about $16.6 billion.
Fortunately for shareholders, since new CEO Meg Whitman has been appointed, HP shares have gained about 23 percent, lowering the shareholder loss to around $7 billion.
How about other Apple rivals?
Google, in Mountain View, Calif., is trying so hard to get into tablets that it's invested heavily in the Android OS, then was willing to pay $900 million for patents from bankrupt Nortel Networks before dropping out of an auction. Finally, in August, it agreed to acquire Motorola Mobility of Libertyville, Ill., for $12.5 billion, to acquire a smartphone and tablet maker.
So far, Motorola's Xoom tablet sales have been a meager 550,000.
Research in Motion, the BlackBerry developer, had a clumsy start into tablets with the BlackBerry PlayBook, selling fewer than 500,000 since introduction.
Last year, the Waterloo, Ontario developer acquired QNX Software from Harman International for a reported $200 million, mainly to get its tablet OS. This week, RIM said PlayBooks with QNX that had been expected this quarter would not be shipped until February 2012.
RIM shares have taken a hit. The company has already attracted takeover investor Jaguar Financial, headed by Toronto's Victor Alboini, who's furious about the 65 percent share decline this year. For shareholders, that's about $6.9 billion.
Meanwhile, Amazon.com, the Seattle, Wash.-based e-retailer and Kindle developer, is entering the tablet sector this quarter with the Kindle Fire, with orders for around five million so far.
