Apple has always led its competitors when it comes to mobile devices. But for the first time in recent history it is responding to market pressures from its competitors in bringing a smaller tablet to market. The California based tech major launched its first 7.9 inch tablet named iPad Mini marking a significant shift in its strategy. It starts with a 16GB of storage, and will be priced at $329, making it the lowest priced iPad tablet yet. The product starts shipping by November 2.
The iPad Mini, is just 7.2mm thick. That's about a quarter thinner than the earlier version iPad. The screen size of the iPad Mini is 7.9 inch compared to 9.7 inches of the earlier iPad versions. Most of the rivals have a 7 inch screen.
“The iPad Mini is about 50% larger display area in the browser,” said Phil Schiller , Vice President, Marketing, Apple while launching the device in California. It is also 53% lighter than the earlier iPads.
The device maker also launched the fourth generation of its 9.7 inch tablets. “This 4th generation is a powerhouse,” said Schiller. The tablet comes with a new chip, the A6X. It doubles the performance of CPU tasks. It comes in both black and white. The basic 16 GB with Wi-Fi version comes at $499.
Apple has already sold 100 million iPad tablets in last two and half years. “We sold more products in the June quarter than any PC manufacturer sold in their entire PC line,” said Tim Cook, CEO, Apple while launching the new version of the tablet. Just half a year ago Apple introduced the 3rd generation iPad with Retina display.
“Apple in the past has defined new products with new form factors and waited for the market to follow, in this instance Apple is following the market trend towards smaller cheaper tablet form-factors. This reflects a fundamental change in the way Apple operates,” said Adam Leach, principal analyst at Ovum. A number of Apple’s rivals including Samsung and Amazon have already launched tablets in this segment.
“Apple is assuming that a lower cost iPad will allow them to sell sufficiently more units to offset the dilution in average selling price that a cheaper device is likely to cause,” Leach said.
From a standing start in 2010, global shipments of smart tablets and other portable smart devices (PSDs) - i.e. those portable computing devices based on "smart" operating systems (OSs) that are not otherwise defined as smartphones or PCs - are expected to exceed 130 million units in calendar year 2012, rising to 349 million units in calendar year 2017. This equates to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% across the period 2012-17 making this the fastest growing category of consumer electronics ever.
The bulk of growth in shipments for smart tablets and other PSDs continues to arise from a combination of three main drivers. The first driver is as additional device sales on top of those for smartphones and PCs as "third devices" in high-penetration PC markets. The second driver is the use of tablets and other PSDs as primary computing devices in low-penetration PC markets like India, an opportunity that plays well to lower-cost tablet form factor devices. The third driver is smart tablets and PSDs as substitutes for segments of the PC market, primarily notebooks and netbooks.