I’m convinced that Apple’s strategy dumbs down its first release of a product to provide that product a ready made path for growth in the future. I think the basics of this strategy happened by accident with the iPod , then where refined even further with the iPhone and has continued full force with the iPad. Here are the key points:

1. Create a killer product with everything anyone would reasonably want included in it. But wait, don’t release it like that.
2. Capitilize on the “I WANT!” factor on the initial release: Make sure the significant components are there, but remove some of the key bells and whistles. Keep those in your pocket for now.
3. Keep those bells and whistles close at hand and dribble them out as new innovations over the next two to three years.
4. When you do finally release the full version, create a two tier market for the product by cutting the original, or now basic, versions price in half.

So using this as a guide, is it so hard to predict that in 2011, there will be two iPad tiers, the basic one which will be released as new in March 2010 and then an iPad-s which will be released in March 2011 with a camera, larger screen, some sort of keyboard feedback and hopefully some resolution to the Flash problem; most likely, HTML5 will be on the horizon to take care of the issue.