THe best rumor I've heard so far is that the ipad2 will see a price drop to make it more cost competitive with kindle fire. We'll see in a few days.
It is rumored today Monday Feb 27 that...
Apple is dropping all models of the iPad 2 next Wednesday except for a single 16 GB iPad 2 WiFi model. That will be the low ball to bring people into Best Buys, Target, Wal-Mart, Sams etc. It may even be for sale in educational channels as part of Apple's new iTextBook agenda.
Think of this as the 16GB iPad with a huge ten inch iron spike in it to prevent too many from walking out the door. The retail sales people are supposed to 'step' the customer up to a real iPad, the iPad3 in HD, which by the way is going to be significantly more expensive then previous iPad models.
I think the price jump is seventy or eighty dollars on the low end in todays iPad 3 rumors.
I think the new price increase will go a long way to give Android tablets some breathing room in the 2012 market. The only problem I have seen is that most of the Android Tablets are still undesirable compared to the iPad ecosystem. Even Amazon is seeing returns of between 25% to 33%.
Realistically competing tablets still have to sell for less, sometimes a lot less, to move the product in 2012.
That is simply Google's fault and they appear to be trying to remedy the situation the best they can.