IHS iSuppli has done a mega tear-down analysis of eight major tablets, including Apple’s iPad and iPad 2, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, Motorola’s Xoom, Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad and Asus’s Eee Pad. As nearly all non-Apple tablets sport beefier innards, how come the lower-specc’d iPad is still ruling the tablet space nearly eighteen months after Steve Jobs announced the original model back in January of last year? It’s because Apple controls the whole widget, IHS senior analyst Wayne Lam explains:

He also tells CNET that the biggest drawback for the Android camp is the lack of critical mass and explains why rivals are wrong to focus on speeds and feeds:

And because Apple owns the user experience by making its own operating system, user interface and hardware designs down to the selection of individual parts, it is able to provide experiences half-baked Android tablets simply cannot touch. So, when will the Android tablets catch up?

Then, there’s this little problem related to manufacturing costs…

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Tapping its billions in bank, Apple often squeezes best deals out if its suppliers. Coupled with volume manufacturing and economies of scale, iPad’s bill of material is still the lowest of the bunch. As a result, Apple enjoys hefty margins that are the envy of the industry. At the same time, something has to give for Android makers who either price themselves out of the market or watch as costs eat into their already slim margins. Apple’s decision to acquire PA Semi chip wizards and dive deeper into semiconductor design has paid off as the company no longer use off-the-shelf processors and parts like its rivals. As a result, Apple is able to differentiate its mobile devices down to the chip level. And as tablets move to quad-core processors like Nvidia’s Kal-El chip and Apple designs the next-generation A6 processor, the story will repeat itself unless Google gets back to the drawing board to match Apple’s exquisite software design, something that has always been the soul of their gadgets. It’s the software, stupid! Plus, Apple gets them while they’re young.

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