One interview basically said Apple had bought out all the parts that they wanted to use and HP is/was unwilling to invest in the product enough to get the parts that would be good enough to be competitive.
The same thing happened in the iPod/mp3 player market. Hard to compete when it takes tens or hundreds of millions of dollars up front just to secure parts to be on par with Apple, let alone trying to get ahead.
Most big company management just doesn't want to invest that kind of money to compete with an established winner like the iPad. Samsung is about the only company who can afford to do it and that's largely because Apple is in effect subsidizing Samsung's production costs by buying so many Samsung parts.
The same thing happened in the iPod/mp3 player market. Hard to compete when it takes tens or hundreds of millions of dollars up front just to secure parts to be on par with Apple, let alone trying to get ahead.
Most big company management just doesn't want to invest that kind of money to compete with an established winner like the iPad. Samsung is about the only company who can afford to do it and that's largely because Apple is in effect subsidizing Samsung's production costs by buying so many Samsung parts.