Home Button Not working

I bought my ipad 2 in February this year; about 6 weeks ago the home button started getting less responsive until finally last week it would work rarely, I cleaned the jack port on the bottoom in case there was debris but there wasn`t. I also recalibrated the home button. After browsing forums yesterday I tried holding the off button and home button on together to reset the ipad. This seemed to improve it but this morning it stopped working entirely so I went for a factory reset and reinstalled from an icloud backup. This has all been to no avail, the home button is still not working. Does anyone have any views as to whether this is hardware or software? I`m inclined to think it is software as it got worse after the reset. Before I take it to be repaired and being charged for a techno wizard to just press a few buttons does anyone have any final pearls of wisdom? I have enabled assistive touch but I really want to get to the route of the problem.
many thanks

Sounds like a hardware problem and should be covered under warranty. If you have an Apple store close by take it in; if not contact Apple with descrption of your problem. They have been very accomodating at replacing defective hardware.