Tablets are everywhere these days. Every major company in the market is making a tablet and have plans to release them within a year. And they all look like an iPad. [ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]I often ridicule companies for their lack of thought and innovation in making tablets and smartphones because a lot of the time, they look amazingly like Apple’s products. The only difference is they are released a year after Apple.

Recently I heard a comment: Well, there’s only one way to make a tablet. It’s flat with a touch screen and a black border around the screen. That’s what we expect a tablet a look like. (I paraphrased).

No, that’s what we expect a tablet to look like now. Only after Apple released the iPad do we expect tablets to look like that.

Before the iPad was released, people were excited about the Microsoft Courier (pictured left), now people are talking about the Samsung’s Galaxy, RIM’s PlayBook and Dell’s Streak.

So, if a tablet is supposed to look like an iPad, why didn’t any of these companies develop it before 2010? Did all of the engineers in the world have the same idea and Apple just happened to beat them to market?

Clearly, tablets have been around for a long time, but none of them looked like an iPad. It took Apple’s innovation to make the tablet what we know today.

Judging from the release schedule, Apple’s competition is about a year behind.