Tablets, what's the point?

It all started in Jan 2010 when Apple.Inc announced the launch of  Ipad, which received mixed opinions. Many technology bloggers didn't see a point in this as it was a nothing but an Ipod touch with bigger screen size . Apple's marketing skills and fanboism led to ipad success and they sold 3million Ipads in 80days, thats truck loads of it.

Smartphones > Netbooks > Laptops/PCs is how the anology goes, now it stands like Smartphones > Tablets > Netbooks > Laptops/PCs.

My question is, are Tablets really needed there in between?. After ipad's success story every other manufacturer planned to release a Tablet to catch-up with the competition. At present scenario a Tablet is a multi-media device, with bigger screen size, which does the same functions of a smartphone. Ipad didn't differ much, it ran the same OS on the iphone with no GPS, 3G/wi-fi only. A user normally can do anything what they can do on a Tablet with their Smartphone sacrificing screen size which isn't deal-breaker for many.

Samsung too has jumped into the Tablet band-wagon, with their Galaxy Tab they have streched a bit far and added phone functionality to it, which IMO is totally meaningless, imagine you making calls with a 7inch slab next to your ears. This device is a bigger sized one of their own GalaxyS smartphone. Every specification word by word, albeit the screen size, is same for both the devices. 

Cost factor: Is it any good investing in a Tablet considering the requirements of a normal user who wants to browse web, handling multimedia etc. Netbooks fits in this case undoubtedly with decent value for money, better specifications, smaller size(compared to laptops) with Windows or any Open source OS. In a long stretch Netbooks offer better functionality over these Tablets. Having said that our Government is planning to launch a low-cost Tablet which is for a different cause altogether. 

There are many tablets by different manufacturers namely HP, Notion-Ink, Toshiba etc. in the pipeline. I wish they come up with something which is an exact alternative to Laptops, netbooks atleast, instead of bigger sized smartphones. How many would prefer a Tablet over Netbook? comments welcome, I would not prefer it for now.

Thanks....