Apple’s newest 9.7-inch third generation iPad is still selling strongly following its launch little over one month ago on March 16th. Now with that big reveal out of the way, the ever hungry rumour monster needs feeding once more so prepare yourselves for the upcoming influx of iPad Mini speculation!
Several sources in China and Korea, including tech rival Samsung, have suggested that Apple’s next evolution of the iPad could see a 7.85-inch model go into production very soon with two manufacturing plants already on board, ready to supply the hardware for the device currently and “temporarily” referred to as the iPad Mini and this should be ready for unveiling around October for a pre-Christmas consumer market launch – possibly alongside an iPhone 5.
The claims however, do contradict late Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ earlier thoughts that the smaller tablet format would be “dead on arrival” and in a statement back in 2012 regarding Apple’s rivals which became very public, suggested that “7-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad”.
Despite being heralded as a tech deity, the Apple founder wasn’t always right in his predictions and as we’ve seen hardware such as the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab and Amazon Kindle Fire (but not so much the BlackBerry Playbook) have done very well to set up interest and a market for smaller tablets. Perhaps Apple has been taking notes recently and it’s time to rewrite the Book of Jobs.
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