Its interresting, apple was slow to catch on with the larger phones market. So I guess they decided that a bigger ipad was the way to go, even though the market seems to be going in the other direction for tablets.

I myself find the 7-8" form factor preferable for reading in bed/watching movies/etc over the larger tablets. Its lighter, yet the buttons are large enough to still be fairly usable. I've sorta stopped questioning every strange thing apple does, but the larger tablets don't really appear to be catching on...