We’ve heard the 7.85″ ‘iPad mini’ rumours before, but it seems Apple are upping the ante with insiders now saying the 7-8″ iPad will be out before the end of the year, possibly October. Just last week, Apple’s principal rival Google announced its own branded 7″ tab made by Asus, called Nexus 7 – with a super powerful quad-core processor running Droid’s Jelly Bean 4.1 – the next instalment of software from the Google gurus. However, iPad’s mini-me won’t have a Retina screen iPad 3, industry sources told Bloomberg, but may have the same display as the iPhone 3GS, which has a 480 X 320 res, says Apple Insider. However, John Gruber, on Daring Fireball blog says “instead of cutting these [display] sheets into 3.5-inch 480×320 displays for the iPhone 3GS, they’ll cut them into 7.85-inch 1024×768 displays for the smaller iPad.” Google’s Nexus 7 released this month, on the other hand, boasts a 1280 x 800 display. Apple’s current 9.7″ iPad models currently hold around 61% of the tab market globally but with the number of tablets sold set to rise dramatically in 2012 and beyond – a whopping 107 million are to be bought by tablet hungry consumers this year alone say analysts IDC – there could still be room for plenty players. Read: iPad To Chew Up ‘Droid, W8 Rivals: Analysts And at $299 locally ($319 in retailers) it will be hard to resist Nexus 7 for many budget conscious consumers – and could make the iPad 3 which costs $539 locally, look pricey by comparison. But “mini” iPad could also have a mini pricetag with many suggesting a RRP of US$250. |
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| Five million tablets could be sold in Oz alone this year – many to people who already own one, analysts Deloitte predicts.
Even software giant Microsoft has decided to dip its toes into the tab markets releasing an own branded device running on its forthcoming platform Windows 8. Apple’s global share of the tabs pie is to grow this year to 62.5% – up from 58% in 2011, IDC predicted earlier this year, meaning Cupertino will be wanting to hold on to its market domination. |
