The highly awaited Ipad 2 was revealed yesterday by Steve Jobs, who made a surprise appearance in San Francisco amidst rumors about his deteriorating health. The Ipad 2 will be available online and in stores on March 11.

The Ipad 2 has most of the features that had been rumored for weeks; it is lighter with built-in cameras to use for Facetime video chatting and taking pictures, and has a new gyroscope which will affect gaming and mapping giving both more of a 360 degree experience. It has a 9.7 inch LCD screen, weighs 1.3 pounds, and is 0.35 inches thick, reports PC World. Apple is offering 6 models of the new Ipad with prices close to the original Ipad which was released last April.

Steve Jobs, whose appearance instantly boosted Apple’s stock price by $3, seemed frail but was upbeat, “We’ve been working on this product for a while, and I didn’t want to miss it. Thank you for having me,” he said.

He added, “We’ve sold 15m iPads in nine months, that’s more than every tablet PC [from Microsoft] ever sold,” he said. “We got over 90% market share. Our competitors were flummoxed.” He received a standing ovation from the audience at the end of his presentation, reports The Guardian.

While Apple seems optimistic about its tablet market dominance, some argue that the changes brought to the new Ipad 2 are only rudimentary and won’t lead to spectacular sales. “The specs are basically what everyone else is coming out within three to four months,” said Stephen Baker of NPD Group. “We’re at a point where this set of features will be similar across every device, at least for this round.”

Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates also told Computerworld, “I don’t see this as heads above the competition, especially the Xoom, right now. Apple fans who want the latest will buy this or upgrade, but I don’t see any overwhelmingly compelling capabilities that would make people sitting on the tablet fence go out and buy one.”

Other analysts are more optimistic. Forrester Research’s Sarah Rotman Epps projects that the iPad 2 will maintain a solid hand over the tablet market, claiming 80% of the US tablet market in 2011, reports The Guardian. JP Morgan’s Mark Moskowitz concurs and says that the firm’s forecast of Apple holding 68 percent of the tablet market in 2011 “may be conservative” in light of Wednesday’s iPad 2 rollout, says AppleInsider.