iPad 3 apple logo on black screen cycle

A friend brought his iPad round. It was constantly switching on, showing the apple logo on black background, going slightly grey for a split second and then switching off.

Holding down the power button did nothing.

Holding down the power button and front button put it in "Connect to iTunes" mode. If you leave it for more then a minute not connected to itunes it begins its' cycle again.

Connecting to iTunes asks if you want to reset to factory defaults. Clicked 'yes' and it's downloading the update as I type.

When it was updating/reseting the ipad it came up with error 1611. After looking into it I found this help page on Apples website describing possible reasons:

1. Security software problem
2. Hardware fault

I concluded that it was a hardware fault. Taking it back to apple store.

....

took it to Apple Store and was replaced - hardware failure