Well I suppose that if you throw loads of money and loads of high technology at a non existent problem you’ll eventually come up with something like the iPad.
However the chances are that some clever little geek in a darkened garret in Silicon Valley invented it and then thought “Now what can we do with this gadget???”
“I know we’ll sell it to people for an obscene price and tell them they can pay to read books on it”.
Yeah it’s a really great idea (not).