Not just Duration
Licence costs?
Mobile phone gear is expensive licence costs. Hence a cheap reference design won't include it. Unless it's a Qualcomm or Broadcom reference design.
If the iTablet / iSlate is as locked to iTunes as is suggested, it might be ARM rather than Atom based. I doubt Apple will want people to buy it and put XP, or Linux (Android, Moblin, Maemo or Ubuntu flavours) on it and break link to iTunes.
Arguably the iPod was about using iTunes to sell iPods. But iphone & iTouch would seem to be about more control and making money from iTune Apps.
Add periodical subscriptions to iTunes for iSlate.
It depends on Price, 3G bundling and extra bells & Whistles as to the future of Arm MIDs / tablets and netbooks that are not phones in your pocket.
Archos have now 3 generations of "tablet" Media players from 4.8" to 9" sizes. They appear to have switched from Trolltech's QT and Linux to Linux+Android. Perhaps for App Store revenue and continued lock down with Nokia having bought Trolltec and wanting open devices?
I'd take MS (WinMo/WinCE or XP), Moblin, Maemo, Unbuntu or even Gentoo in preference to vendor Locked And MegaCorp controlled Android or iPhone/iSlate perversions of OSX