By most accounts, Apple owns the consumer tablet market selling 11 m tablets in the last quarter compared to 1 million for Samsung. What has been exciting and unexpected is its rapid adoption in the enterprise market. Why is this?

The iPad was a good consumer tablet first. People wanted to use it at home and at work. For companies, it offered the right form-factor for getting business done. The screen is big. The touch screen keyboard is large. Its battery lasts almost a day. It requires no training. It's fast, thin and light.

But employees, not corporations, are shelling out $600 of their own cash and using them at work. The lesson for enterprise competitors is that it’s not enough for a tablet to have “IT friendly” features. It must appeal to consumers.

With a few notable exceptions, such as United Airlines, most businesses aren't interested in buying tablets because they don’t replace any other device. Most employees will still need their smart phone and a laptop. Being forced to purchase and manage another device isn’t high on IT’s list.

Does that mean that tablets, save for the iPad, have no chance in the enterprise? No, but it does means that tablet contenders must first avoid all of the mistakes that tablets before them have made, as well as push the envelope.

A tablet won’t be successful in the enterprise if it is underpowered or too small. Employees won’t embrace a tablet that has an unresponsive touch screen, a small touchscreen keyboard or a bad browser.

And if the platform lacks consumer apps, it’s also dead in the water–just look at the Touchpad and the Playbook. At $600 tablets aren’t cheap. At $200 anyone can buy one, but it might not be functional for enterprise use.

What should we expect in 2012?

My guess is that we’ll see more products arrive with high functionality but a midrange price of say $399.

On the hardware side, tablets will gain better cameras. 3D imaging, voice navigation and Kinect style gestures could also hit toward the end of the year. However, gestures are more likely a 2013 feature.

I expect 2012 to be a year of opportunity and strife for tablet makers as these companies try to straddle the bridge between consumer friendliness and enterprise worthiness. Ice Cream Sandwich will make Android tablets more suited for business, but we won’t see the fruits of this until later in 2012.

Apple will continue to dominate the space primarily because it has the biggest lead in apps. Microsoft could make an end of year splash with Windows phone and Windows 8. Businesses are already calling my firm (Lopez Research) to ask if they should be thinking about Microsoft more seriously, especially in the light of RIM’s woes.

But the biggest change of 2012 is that solid, cost-effective tablets will drive businesses to mobilize more processes and applications.

Good hardware is a necessary but not sufficient condition to become a leader in the tablet space. Tablets also need to have the support of rich software.

Paper to glass—where tablets replace presentations, pricebooks and executive dashboards—will continue to be the most mainstream app. But tablets will gain other mission critical skills such as a tools for collaboration, data collection, CRM and new industry specific apps such as medical apps.

In 2011, the iPad illustrated that tablets could change the use of apps on mobile devices. In 2012, apps will make tablets more meaningful in business.