"I think it's going to be huge," said Everett Katzen, Springboard's president. "I think if people weren't waiting for new features, they didn't want to buy an older model. Ever since Christmas, I've been hearing that people are waiting for the new model to buy an iPad."

Peter Fader, who watches the consumer electronics industry from his perch as the co-director of the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, says the expanded market placement for the iPad 2 will help Apple ward off its burgeoning tablet competition. There's little danger that expansion will dilute the Apple brand.

"I think it's brilliant. The broader (the marketplace) the better," he said. "It might be an issue at the outset of a product, when you want to create a certain kind of cachet. The iPad is past that. There's obviously competition on the horizon, so you want to crowd them out on the shelf."