The yawning gap between market leader Apple and the rest of the Tablet vendors (Motorola, Samsung, Acer, Asus, HP and the like) is growing wider.

A couple of days back during a visit to Staples, we found the U.S. office supplies store offering $100 instant rebate on all tablets except the Apple iPad and HP’s TouchPad.

Staples does not sell the iPad but offers a whole bunch of others including TouchPad, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy, Dell Streak, Acer Iconia, Asus Eee Pad Transformer and Blackberry PlayBook.

Despite the $100 discount, Staples’ tablet section wore a deserted look during our visit.

By the way, Staples’ $100-off deal is valid until tomorrow.

It seemed to us that even with lower prices the Apple rivals are finding it hard to compete with the iPad 2.

Currently, non-Apple tablets are priced around the same level as the iPad 2 but trending down. For a WiFi only model, iPad 2 tablet pricing ranges from $499 for a 16GB model to $699 for a 64GB version.

Motorola Xoom Tablets – Pitiful

In more distressing news, Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha disclosed today that the company shipped (not the same as sold) 440,000 Xoom Android tablets in its fiscal second quarter ended July 2, 2011.

Besides the U.S., Motorola offers the Xoom in Latin America, Europe, China, Korea and Japan.

During almost the same period (the three months ended June 25), Apple sold 9.2 million iPad 2 tablets.

Motorola’s move to cut pricing of its 32GB Xoom from $599 to $499 is unlike to help either. Apple owns the market.

All the tablet vendors riding the Android train will have little but huge losses to show in the coming quarters.

For the full-year, Motorola expect tablet shipments will range from 1.3 million to 1.5 million.

How long before most of the non-iPad tablet vendors kiss the dust?

  iPad, iPad 2, Tablets, Xoom