Two questions:
1) Will Apple sell iPad2 and iPad3 simultaneously, with the iPad2 being the value choice (like iPhone4 or 3GS)? Or will they drop the iPad2 and sell only the iPad3?
You pose a good question. My thinking is that the iPad3 won't be more then the iPad2 prices. Apple has rarely increased the price of a product when it was upgraded. Actually, I don't think they ever have during Jobs leadership.
However if the Amazon Fire is considered the low end tablet, then Apple may drop the iPad2 to some point in between so there's no breathing room in between the iPad3 and the low end.
If Apple can successfully dominate the mid to high range for another year, it will give them more time to make the ecosystem so powerful that no one, including Samsung, will be able to do more then just gnaw around the edges of the tablet market.
By making the iCloud work with the iPhone and both the iMac and MSOS PCs, Apple has done two things...
1. Apple ceded the PC market to Microsoft's OS, while declaring that market a fading market.
2. Hardened Apple's dominance of the tablet market, while making only room in the iCloud for people with an iPhone. This should add more value to the iPhone and start a turn-around for iPhone iOS market share.
As Jobs once said on "All Things D" he expected to have a five year lead on the competition with the iPhone. Google's spy on the Apple board cut that lead down to less then three years. I think Apple's hidden game plan will see see an iPhone market share resurgence of smart phone market share, along with a fall out of weaker smart phone manufacturers. The Carrier IQ scandal will hurt the Andriod platform just as Apple is entrenching the iOS ecosystem.
Anyway, that's the way I see it.