Nook is to the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle, as "???" is to the Apple (AAPL) iPad (RIMM, GOOG, MMI)

Heading into the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week there is little doubt that there will be a dearth of tablets for consumers and industry talking-heads to chatter about, all looking to take down the reigning king of touchscreen wonder devices, the iPad from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).

Doesn't this all feel a bit familiar?

It seems as if it was only last year (it was) that the tech world was trying to play catch up to the Kindle e-reader from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN). Seemingly every booth at CES last year had Kindle clone, but the laws of nature prevailed and now only a few were left standing to pick up the scraps that Amazon left.

Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS) has a winner with the Nook, its best-selling holiday item in 2010. Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Reader also latched on to the market, but outside of those two there is little competition left for the Kindle.

Now it is time for the best and brightest in Silicon Valley to put their big boy shoes on and give their best shot to Apple's behemoth tablet, Which has defined the tablet category.

So what will be learned this week about the future silver and bronze medal finishers in the tablet race?

The doppelganger getting the most pre-show buzz may be the Motorola Mobility Holdings (NYSE: MMI) offering. The Moto tablet will feature the latest Android operating system from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), "Honeycomb,"which is being designed to work with tablet computers.

"We expect nearly every major original equipment manufacturer to introduce a tablet at CES as the market races to deliver devices to catch up with the Apple iPad, but we expect most of the spotlight to be on Motorola," Jefferies analyst Adam Benjamin wrote in a note to investors Monday.

So perhaps a Motorola tablet can do for the recently severed company what its Droid lineup did in the smartphone arena.

Google's Honeycomb will also be a player for many other contenders (or pretenders) looking to be recognized in the tablet market, including potential offerings from Acer, Archos, Asus, Creative, Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Entourage, Fusion Garage, LG, MSI, Samsung, Toshiba, and ViewSonic.

Samsung already has the Galaxy Tab, which has been the only real alternative thus far in the tablet marke to the iPad, but the device is running on an archaic version of Android that has seen criticism for being a smartphone OS.

Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) has the Playbook tablet on deck, but the device has already been dubbed "dead on arrival" by some analysts, and battery issues may push the device's release date back.

The Playbook, like many non-Apple iOS and Android tablets, faces lack of developer confidence for applications, which stand to be the driving forcegoing forward. Currently RIM is holding on to two operating systems, the BlackBerry 6.0 to its smartphones and QNX for its tablet.

Another casualty left in the iPad wake could be another offering from Dell. The computer maker brought the Streak to slaughter earlier this year with the hope that the 5-inch screen would be tempting to consumers that wanted a tablet that they can carry in their pockets. Someone should probably tell Dell that is called a smartphone, and they have been out for some time now.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) is expected to show of what Windows has in store for tablet PCs. Last year CEO Steve Ballmer trudged out the Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) Slate, which debuted earlier this year and nobody cared.

One potential darkhorse could be the rumored PalmPad from HP. A tablet from Palm, which was bought by HP last year, could raise some eyebrows at CES, where just two years prior the Palm Pre smartphone stole the show. The Pre promptly failed, but there was no denying the quality of the device or the WebOS powering it.

Analysts are expecting at least 100 tablets to enter the market, so it is fitting that the majority will be unveiled in Vegas this week, because the show floor will figurative roulette wheel suitor to the leavings left behind by the iPad.

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