I am unable to start my startup because of its scale
Travis: I applaud you for aiming high, and for the confidence you exhibit with your idea!  Best of luck on it.However, you definitely have a problem with the scale / scope of your product.  As byoung2 points out, there's only 1 ipad, and there's really only one company in the world that could produce it.  So it's not out of the question, but it will be difficult.I heartily recommend that you undergo Steve Blank's Customer Development model.  Read his book "4 steps to the epiphany", as well as his blog.  His philosophy is very straight forward, and it will show you the steps that you need to use to get going on this project.First, I'd recommend you do some more Customer Discovery/Validation.  Don't believe people who tell you it's a great idea.  Go TALK to your customers, ask them point blank if they would buy it, and for how much.  As he states repeatedly, "no business idea survives first contact with customers."  It's very true.  Go talk to them.  Get people to sign a piece of paper (non-binding), saying that if they had your product with features X,Y,Z, at price point $N, they would purchase one.  You will learn a LOT doing this.Once you know who your customers are, and what they want, you start to develop your product through an iterative cycle.  Build your "minimum viable product", which is the smallest product that you could sell and still consider it your product.  As a hint, that won't include the SDK or any of the app store type stuff you discuss above.  What is the ONE thing that defines your product?Then build that one thing.  I suggest you read the Paypal story in "Founders At Work" and learn from their initial demo.  In short, Paypal was to be a way to pay other people by beaming virtual currency through cell phones / PDAs (use case: split checks at restaurant).  They didn't have the cash to actually build one on a PDA, so they made a little interactive website that would demo the functionality.The interesting conclusion is that so many people actually tried to send money through the webapp that they realized their entire product was wrong.  So they pivoted.To sum, think big but work small.  Cut EVERYTHING out that you can.  Talk to your customers.  Realize that your original idea probably will need modifications (pivots) to succeed.Once you get through all that stuff, you will have a better grasp on the potential for your idea.  If you do Blank's steps well, have a good idea, you will be in good position to raise money / find partnerships for anything you want.It's a long road.  Best of luck!