'Not just a shrunken down iPad': Apple unveils mini tablet
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Apple is refusing to compete on price with its rivals in the tablet market — it's pricing its new, smaller iPad well above the competition. Early this morning, the company revealed the iPad mini, with a screen that's about two-thirds the size of the full-size model, and said it will cost $369 and up.
Apple starts taking orders for the new model on Friday October 26, said marketing chief Phil Schiller at an event in San Jose, California. Wi-Fi-only models will be available on November 2. Later - a "couple of weeks" after November 2 - the company will start selling models capable of accessing "LTE", or 4G, mobile data networks in Australia.
The price fits into the Apple product lineup between the iPad 2 at $429 and the latest version of the iPod touch at $329. But company watchers had been expecting Apple to price the iPad mini at $US250 ($243) to $US300 ($292) to counter the threat of less expensive tablets like Amazon's Kindle Fire, which starts at $US159 ($154). Barnes & Noble's Nook HD and Google's Nexus 7 both start at $US199 ($193).
When pre-orders start on Friday, the iPad mini will be competing for the attention of gadget shoppers with the release of Windows 8, Microsoft's new operating system.
The screen of the iPad mini is 7.9 inches on the diagonal, making it larger than the 7-inch screens of the competitors. It also sports two cameras, on the front and on the back, which the competitors don't.
The iPad mini is as thin as a pencil and weighs 308 grams, half as much as the full-size iPad with its 9.7-inch screen, Schiller said.
The screen resolution is 1024 by 768 pixels, the same as the iPad 2 and a quarter of the resolution of the flagship iPad, which starts at $539.
"It's not just a shrunken-down iPad, it's an entirely new design," Schiller said.
Apple's late founder, Steve Jobs, attacked the whole idea of smaller tablets in his last appearance on a conference call with analysts, in October 2010.
"The reason we wouldn't make a 7-inch tablet isn't because we don't want to hit a price point. It's because we don't think you can make a great tablet with a 7-inch screen," Jobs said. "The 7-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad."
Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue had a different opinion at the time. He had come to the conclusion that a 7-inch tablet would work well, and tried to convince Jobs that it was a product the company should pursue. In an internal email sent in January 2011, he said Jobs was starting to come around. The email surfaced as part of Apple's patent trial against Samsung this year. Jobs died last October.
Company watchers have been expecting the iPad mini for a year, and most of the details, except the price, had leaked out.
Full story here including an upgrade for the fourth generation full-size iPad
