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Apple gets ready to unveil its 'iPad Mini' and the rumors are flying
[October 23, 2012]

Apple gets ready to unveil its 'iPad Mini' and the rumors are flying


Oct 23, 2012 (San Jose Mercury News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Apple (AAPL) fans, analysts and the press chewed over the latest rumors Monday as they prepared for Tuesday's expected unveiling of the so-called "iPad Mini," the purportedly downsized version of the world's most popular tablet.



In the final hours before the 10 a.m. media event that Apple has scheduled for downtown San Jose's historic California Theatre, there was widespread agreement on the screen size (7.85 inches versus the iPad's 9.7) of the gadget expected to go head-to-head with Amazon's Kindle Fire and Google's (GOOG) Nexus 7.

Online speculators assumed the smaller iPad would come in a version that connects to cellular networks, while The Wall Street Journal reported Apple has ordered 10 million iPad Minis from its Chinese suppliers. Meanwhile, one Ukranian blog allegedly leaked parts of the Mini, showing off an anodized black aluminum backplate.


But the million-dollar question, said analyst Avi Greengart with Current Analysis as he boarded a plane for the San Jose event, is what the thing will cost. With estimates of the crucial price point all over the map, ranging from $249 to $320 or more, Greengart said Apple needs to carefully price the new device if it hopes to beat back growing competition from other tablet makers.

Apple CEO Tim Cook "has said in the past he's unwilling to leave a spot under the pricing umbrella where competitors could come and undercut Apple's growth," Greengart said. "So while we expect a smaller and lighter and lower-priced iPad in the Mini, we just don't know how much lower it will be." The problem Apple faces, analysts say, is that it must sell the Mini at a price high enough to help push its earnings growth, but not so high that it will drive buyers to go with the Kindle and other products. The quality of these competing tablets has improved dramatically with each new refresh, yet they sell for as little as $159 in the case of the Kindle Fire. By comparison, the latest iPad starts at $500.

"Our expectation for the Mini is $299 or lower," said Amit Daryanani with RBC Capital Markets. "The whole point is you want to have it low enough, hopefully, to leverage the price. So with a $50 education discount, for example, you could sell it for $249 to students, which is half the price of an iPad." Daryanani estimates Apple will sell 8 million of the smaller iPads this year, cashing in just in time for the lucrative holiday season. And in another sweet bit of timing on Apple's part, the Mini announcement comes just three days before Microsoft releases its first-ever tablet PC, the $499 Surface, stealing plenty of thunder from the Redmond tech behemoth.

If Apple follows its own playbook of past product launches, shoppers could expect the iPad Mini to go on sale within two weeks, putting it into stores just a few days before the presidential election.

Despite former Apple CEO Steve Jobs' celebrated resistance to putting out a smaller 7-inch tablet, Amazon and Google have made it increasingly clear that there's a huge market for a moderately priced device that's great for consuming all sorts of media, yet sized appropriately for a suit pocket or purse. And with 250,000 iPad-optimized apps, including plenty of digital-book reading through iBooks and access to Apple's integrated ecosystem of products and cloud storage, Greengart said the downsized tablet makes a lot of sense.

"Would someone buy both a small and a large iPad along with a MacBook Air and an iPod he asked. Probably not too many.

"But when you look at it on a household basis, you absolutely have lots of people out there buying multiple computing devices for different uses," he said. "I think there's plenty of room for a smaller iPad." Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689 or follow him at Twitter.com/patmaymerc.

___ (c)2012 San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Visit the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) at www.mercurynews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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