The iPad 2 launched on March 11, 2011 in the US, with international sales including additional countries following on March 25; in several markets the rollout continued through late March. It introduced dual cameras, a faster A5 chip, and the Smart Cover accessory, helping Apple extend its dominance of the nascent tablet market against a wave of Android competitors.
When Steve Jobs, visibly thin from his health struggles but insistent on personally introducing the device, walked onstage in San Francisco in March 2011, few in the audience knew it would be one of his final major public product launches before his death that October.
The iPad 2 wasn't a radical reinvention — it looked much like its predecessor — but its refinements mattered enormously for a product category still proving itself. Front and rear cameras enabled FaceTime video calling on a tablet for the first time, a 33 percent reduction in thickness made it feel dramatically more portable, and the magnetic Smart Cover became an instant signature accessory.
Competing tablets running Google's Android and Honeycomb software were arriving that same season, and reviewers widely judged the iPad 2 as extending Apple's lead rather than merely matching new rivals. Within a year Apple had sold tens of millions of units, and the device helped accelerate a broader shift of everyday computing tasks — browsing, reading, video calls — away from laptops and onto touchscreen tablets.