If iPad had a browser better than Chrome on Chromebook, would iPad still lose to Chromebook?

Puffin has a free app called “Puffin Academy” with 10M iOS users in the education market. It helped Apple sell millions of iPad to K12 schools and students. We are not sure how much Puffin helped iPad, but the fact is iPad, with millions of apps, lost to Chromebook, with Chrome as the only app, after Apple blocked update of Puffin Academy.

The timing may be just a coincidence but I cannot stop thinking “If iPad had a browser better than Chrome on Chromebook, would iPad still lose to Chromebook?”. By the way, some insiders told me that it had nothing to do with Puffin — Google subsidized Chromebook heavily to win the market in the long run while Apple milked the cow to maximize its profit for the short term. I think this is a credible postmortem conclusion.

As iPad fading away, what’s left on iPad is just a what if — what if iPad had a good browser. Both Puffin and Apple survived the fall of iPad. What if they can win together?