Apple May Launch iPad Mini by End of 2012

The Apple iPad has quickly become one of the most popular devices on the planet and it’s actually set benchmarks for what tablets should be like. Combining a large, gorgeous high resolution display, powerful hardware and Apple’s slick iOS, the iPad was very well received. However, like most Apple products, it was on the steeper side on the pricing front. Despite this, the iPad has pretty much dominated the tablet market and every other tablet has been left in the dust.

Since a few months, there have been rumors of a new, smaller iPad launch by the end of 2012. Just recently a few manufacturers and anonymous sources have confirmed that Apple is indeed coming out with a smaller version of the iPad by fall 2012, probably with the iPhone 5. So what do we know as of now? Not much, unfortunately.

There have been tidbits floating around, have a look:

• 7-8 inch screen – The iPad Mini will go head to head with Amazon Kindle Fire, BlackBerry PlayBook and the recently announced Google Nexus 7 tablet. All of these tablets feature 7 inch screens.
• Variants – Like the Google Nexus 7 tablet, the iPad Mini will probably come in 8 GB and 16 GB variants.
• Screen Resolution – Apparently, the iPad Mini will not feature Retina Display as a cost cutting measure and will instead probably come with the original iPad’s 1024 x 768 resolution. However, some reports suggest that it will indeed feature Retina Display.
• Hardware – Nothing has been revealed about the processing power, but we reckon it could be an underclocked version of the iPad 3rd Gen’s processor or maybe an underclocked version of the iPhone 5‘s processor, although that seems unlikely. Some reports say that the iPad Mini could also use the older Apple A5 processors.
• Naming – While iPad Mini is the name being thrown around most often, it could also very well be called the iPad Nano. Let’s wait and watch.
• Pricing – The biggest factor of them all is pricing. Even though the iPad is priced rather highly, it’s still flying off the shelves and people would rather wait, save up and go for an iPad instead of settling for a lower priced Android tablet. That speaks volumes about the way Apple has captured the market. Now, if the iPad Mini launches at a lower price point and manages to deliver the goods like its bigger brother, it will practically destroy the competition. On that note, rumored prices of the iPad Mini are around 249-299$.

The iPad Mini could very well turn out to be like the iPod, there are numerous alternatives but it remains the highest selling music player ever. Maybe a few years down the line the iPad could be the sort of product that holds 80% of the market share while everything else has to fight to remain in the 20%. Looks like the Google Nexus 7 has a solid competitor on the way, and it hasn’t even released yet!

Steve Jobs once said that 7 inch tablets are in no man’s land, they’re not full sized tablets nor large smartphones. He had said that they weren’t devices Apple was interested in manufacturing. But after hearing the rumors about the iPad Mini, it’s safe to say Tim Cook has other plans in mind. So what do you think about the iPad Mini, yay or nay?