Today’s gossip surrounding Apple’s plans for a new iPad Mini with a 7.35-inch screen would have been greeted with cries of derision 12 months ago. In October last year, Steve Jobs used an Apple conference call to issue a lengthy diatribe on why rivals’ 7-inch devices weren’t up to scratch, saying, “We believe 10-inch screen is minimum.” Leaving aside the fact that the iPad’s screen is actually 9.7-inches, what Jobs was saying is that a tablet needs to be sizeable enough to work as intended.
Fast forward a year though, and the landscape is all set to change. Yes, the 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook has been a disaster, but the imminent arrival of the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire changes things hugely. Jobs may have said 7-inch slates were “dead on arrival”, but my feeling is that an Apple iPad Mini with a display of that size is inevitable.
Until now, Apple’s competition has been largely from manufacturers offering decent Android Honeycomb slates, but without the same breezy content access and app support which makes the iPad so successful. The dawn of the Kindle Fire, though, changes that. Not only does Amazon’s new tablet offer access to MP3s, movies, TV shows and app content on a beautifully designed platform, it also comes in cheap, thanks in no small part to its size.
Apple is obviously going to feel the heat. 2012 will be the year that competitors, especially the Kindle Fire, finally start to make head way into Apple’s huge lead in the tablet space. It can of course cut prices, but that’s never been the Apple way. What it needs is an entry level product, something to entice those unsure of the tablet space, but definitely sure that they love the Apple brand.
Step forward, then, the iPad Mini. The LG executive who said that his company was working on screens for this device has clearly overstepped the mark. The original story, which appeared in The Korea Times, has been pulled. Is Apple behind such a move? I wouldn’t be surprised. This says everything you need to know about the sensitivity of this device and the likelihood of its existence.
So, what has Apple got to gain by introducing a device which Jobs was so clearly against in the last year of his life? More users inside its ecosystem for one. It’ll also give it the chance to market the iPad to a wider audience, following the same path as the iPod Mini and the iPod nano. Obviously, those were much easier devices to slim down and sell, as they weren’t so reliant on vast swathes of different kinds of content. But hooking new users into iTunes, iCloud and the App Store is just what Apple wants. It can’t face losing out in the tablet space in the same way it did in the PC space in the 80s.
Apple will doubtless want to get the iPad Mini right and will find a way of trying to square Jobs’ previous comments with a new device. But make no mistake, this pared down slate is coming, and means Amazon and countless others will have to redouble their efforts to take down Apple’s slate.
