It’s interesting to watch the PC industry play catch-up with Apple’s iPad and make no mistake, that’s exactly what’s happening. The PC tablet has been out for some time, but they didn’t bring anything new to the game and they still don’t. Apple on the other hand innovated how we think about a tablet computer. It’s lightweight, has a virtual keyboard, can handle many different types of media and organizes our lives. All with a 10-inch touchscreen.

Tradition PC companies are scared to do the things that Apple does. It seems the goal for them is to include as much backward compatibility as possible, but still try to innovate and have a tablet.

You can’t do both. Windows is a perfect example of how this strategy fails.

While Apple will tell consumers and developers, they will no longer support an operating system, PC companies try to support products for as far back as they possibly can. That severely limits how far and how quickly you can move forward.

The most recent iPad competitor comes from LG with the following specs:

Boasting a 10.1-inch LED capacity touchscreen, the UX10 was one of the most solid tablets we’ve had the opportunity to touch. The prototype on the floor was equipped with an Intel Atom Z530 processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium, a 1.3 megapixel front-facing webcam, an SD card slot, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, a 7200mAh battery and a micro-HDMI output.

Unless I’m mistaken, that’s a netbook with a touchscreen. We already know that netbooks are not the future. They weren’t even the future when people thought they were the future.

Netbooks showed those that were paying attention that the market was hungry for a small device. Something they could use for work and play, but something that was very portable.

The netbook over-promised and under-delivered in all facets of what consumers were looking for. The iPad seems to have hit the mark perfectly, selling two million devices in under 60 days.

The biggest iPad competitor is the next iPad. It’s really that simple. Until other companies are willing to innovate instead of following the same tired path they did with PCs, Apple will run away with the market.