• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, August 12, 2011

Earlier this week, I caught myself glancing at the display for a tablet-computer-other-than an iPad at my local Costco.

"Whaddaya crazy," I remonstrated myself, before pushing my cart onwards with a brief reverie about the days when the big box store carried Apple's iPods. I can't even tell you the brand name of the tablet I was looking at -- Vizio? HP? Mattel? All I remember is that it had an 8-inch screen and a pedigree that was other than Jobsian.

Such is the state of the booming tablet "category" that the headline on the top story in the Wall Street Journal's Marketplace section this morning declares: "Tablet War Is An Apple Rout." The immediate occasion of the proclamation is the news that HP is cutting the price on its iPad rival, the TouchPad, by 20% just two months after its launch.

Besides widespread price slashing by all pretenders to the tablet throne, another sign of Apple's dominance, writes Ian Sheer, is that "rivals discuss how many tablets they are shipping, but don't disclose how many units are actually being purchased by customers." At the same time, Apple says it's selling every iPad it can manufacture. It shipped 9.3 million in last quarter alone.

Nick Bilton reports in the New York TimesBits blog that an HP spokeswoman would not admit that slow sales has anything to do with the decision to reduce the TouchPad's price. It's all in a product's life cycle, it appears: "HP continually evaluates pricing for its products and is pleased to permanently extend its back-to-school promotion on the HP TouchPad," she says.

In Germany, Apple this week won an injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab that prohibits its sale across the European Union except in the Netherlands because of similarities in the design. Apple is also seeking to block sales in the U.S. until patent-infringement claims are aired in court, and Samsung has agreed not to introduce a version of the Galaxy in Australia until a lawsuit is resolved, Karin Matussek reports in Bloomberg. 

Buried in the German court filing "is the indication that [Apple] will seek a similar injunction against Motorola for the XOOM," reveals ZDNet's James Kendrick, who then asks, "Where will this madness end?"

Motorola is preparing a global launch of a new generation of tablets with "aggressive form factors," according to CEO Sanjay Jha. (For the sake of a good, clean fight, we can only hope that the phrase "form factor" does not make it, in any configuration, into the marketing and advertising for the product.)

Jha admitted in an analysts' call Tuesday that "tablets' price points move much faster than Motorola anticipated," Radu Tyrsina reports in ITProPortal. 

The argument that the Samsung Galaxy, or any other competitor, looks too much like an iPad is just plain ridiculous, PC's Kendrick feels.

"Tablets and its smaller sibling smartphone are devices that are similar no matter who makes them," he writes. "The function of these devices leaves little room to make the appearance of them distinctive, and that's why this injunction is insane."

Meanwhile, my Web meanderings this morning reveal that it was indeed a fresh-off-the-boat Vizio that I saw at Costco on Tuesday.

"Vizio's 8-inch tablet running Google's Android 2.3 Gingerbread has arrived a bit later than expected but also at a significantly reduced price," writes PC's Damon Poeter. "Originally slated for a mid-July release and a $380 price tag, the Vizio Tablet was finally made available Tuesday by Amazon, Costco, Sam's Club, and Walmart for just $299."

EWeek.com's Don Reisinger has compiled 10 reasons why lower-priced tablets won't succeed against iPad 2 (and the specter of iPad 3, which has its own rumor-spotting site).

Among them are:

• They're still expensive;

• It plays into Apple's market strategy to be viewed as a premium provider of a premium product;

• Android and Web OS aren't up to par yet;

• It's all about differentiation

I would add an 11th reason. For those who have been in a long-term relationship with Apple, even glancing at another brand seems like the violation of an unwritten commandment: Thou Shalt Not Byte Anything But An Apple.