When, or if, do you think it will happen and who would you put your money on to do it?
What do I think will happen? Isn't that what the future is for? What do I care? Wow me! I'm the customer, not Kreskin.
I love my Nexus but it could be alot better ie; expandable memory on the tablet via a micro SD card, a keyboard using the pogo charger, a real usb port and HDMI port. The Infinity came close but it had too many bugs and too much lag imho.
I'm happy with my Infinity. Its SD slots are maxed out, giving me plenty of storage if I need it. I don't know if it does HDMI-over-USB, and really don't care. I bought it because it came with the full-HD screen.
My perfect tablet would have a 10" HD screen that folds out to be a 40" 8K screen. The docking adapter would accept a keyboard and/or a base that gives me high SPL surround sound, and an optional subwoofer with its own internal battery. Everything would be able to run on battery power! A Thunderbolt interface would allow me to plug in a CPU/GPU card cage for massively parallel processing capability in the field. A true desktop replacement. That too would have a massive battery pack.
A software defined radio would enable the tablet to work with any wireless data service in the world, and the manufacturer will have roaming agreements with all of them included in the base price. All of them could be multiplexed for better Internet performance and fail-over. The radio would also support wireless HDMI to feed included wireless HDMI 3-D goggles that play full-HD in 3-D or 2K in 2-D.
All of the hardware would be made of high strength MIL-SPEC materials, so I could drive nails with them if I wanted to. Each component would come with its own Anvil case, and the Anvil cases would be lockable to make one large Anvil case. With a fold-out desk.
Finally, as a reward for beta testing this ultimate tablet, I'd receive lifetime product updates.
That seems about right.