By analyst Antonette Goroch, special for MobilizedTV

The absence of Apple at the Macworld Expo 2011 in San Francisco was hardly noticed. A testament as to just how far the Apple ecosystem has blossomed beyond its core products, even without Apple actually exhibiting, the Expo floor was abuzz with

arious peripherals and applications designed to both integrate and extend the user experiences for iPods, iPhones, iPads and Macs, from mounting equipment to back-up hard drives to media and productivity applications. Nowhere was this trend more evident than in products and chatter surrounding the chameleon-like media table, the iPad.

With its beyond-expectation shipments for 2010, it’s no surprise that the iPad took center stage at Macworld. Skeptics abounded early on when the product was launched last spring, but the iPad has to proven to be much more than just an e-reader like the Amazon Kindle, establishing itself as a highly mobile, multi-use, connected device, capable of a variety of functions from the practical and productive to the entertaining and downright silly.

Read more at MobilizedTV here.