The iPad Mini: It’s Back!
This rumor has come and gone and come again, driven by two seemingly opposing forces: The army of smaller, more portable 7-inch Android tablets and, a while ago, Steve Jobs’s insistence that 7-inch tablets are a bad idea. Now there’s new incentive for Apple to address this market thanks to Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, Amazon’s Kindle Fire (and rumored refresh) and Microsoft’s attempt to grab some of the iPad’s market share with Surface. And Steve’s no longer with us, although of course he was also famous for saying one thing and then doing the opposite some time later.
Which is why we should pay attention when the Wall Street Journal, often suspected to be an official “leaky channel” for Apple in order to manage expectations, says that mass production of a new iPad variant with a display “smaller than 8 inches” is going to start in September. The news comes via sources inside the system, and mentions Apple’s supply chain.
It seems like a clever idea–as we’ve long argued–because the tablet would be more portable, could sell at a significantly reduced price point while still being highly profitable, leverage Apple’s three years of iPad expertise and the design model of the still-in-production iPad 2 in particular, and augment rather than fragment Apple’s tablet dominance. The “less than” 8-inch screen would let Apple distinguish itself from the hoard of 7-inch Androids, and the cheaper price may help it sell in markets like China where Apple is just beginning to tap a vast revenue stream.
Even more recently website GottaBeMobile has posted photos it says are early “engineering samples” of the design for the iPad mini. Essentially these are plastic replicas of the final device’s shape so that designers can manhandle the object to sense size and portability, and so that third-party manufacturers can put together cases and peripherals.
The device looks thinner than the current iPad, and seems to have the same smaller dock connector rumored for the iPhone for 2012. It also appears to have ever-so-slightly different proportions, which could be an indicator it has a 16:9 widescreen.
