Video: new iPad Mini will ‘trounce’ rivals, say Apple bosses

By CLAIRE SMITH
Published on 24/10/2012 08:34

IT DOMINATES the tablet computers market with 100 million sold worldwide over the last two and a half years.

But facing increasing opposition from the Amazon Kindle and the Microsoft Surface, Apple yesterday made its first foray into the mini tablet market with the launch of the iPad Mini.

From a theatre in San Jose, Apple bosses Tim Cook and Phil Schiller introduced a gadget which they said would trounce the opposition.

“Others have tried to make a tablet smaller than the iPad and they have failed miserably,” Mr Schiller said.

Apple hopes its new device will be a popular Christmas gift, but some commentators have warned the price – £269 for the cheapest version – may put

customers off.

After a long preamble the

device was unveiled to cheers from the audience.

Schiller said the it was “as thin as a pencil” and “as light as a pad of paper.”

The new iPad mini is just 7.2mm thick – a quarter of the depth of the iPad 2.

It weighs 0.68 lbs – half as light as the iPad two. The screen is 7.9 inches across, compared with 9.7 inches of the iPad Two.

Cook and Schiller made great play of the fact that, unlike the tablets run on Android, the iPad mini can run 275,000 applications, including facetime.

It also comes with two

cameras, one at the front and one at the back. However, the HD display is not as high

resolution as the latest versions of the iMac and the macbook.

Ernest Doku, telecoms expert at uSwitch.com, said: “Size-wise, the iPad mini is right in between the original iPad and the iPhone 5’s 4-inch display, and could have been another size for app developers to worry about. But all the apps made for the iPad work seamlessly on the mini.

“A killer price point would certainly have put the cat amongst the pigeons in the tablet space. Initially rumoured to be around the £200 mark, it turns out people will have to pay £269 for the cheapest version of the iPad mini.

“Will they pay it? Given the plus points of a burgeoning App Store and intuitive and now

familiar interface, I think so.

“The iPad mini is definitely a tablet on the attack, and it could clean up as the gift to get in the run-up to Christmas.”

Salman Chaudhry, analyst at Context, added: “We expect to see Apple take sales away from Kindle, as Apple will be marketing the tablet as an iBook, iTunes consumption device. “

According to reports Apple instructed suppliers in China to manufacture 10m iPad minis.

Former Apple executive Lars Albright said it made sense to expand the iPad market share. “Apple sensed early that they had a real winner with the iPad and that has proven to be

correct.”

What we learned from the launch...

• iPad mini unveiled:

- Screen resolution is 7.9” diagonal, 1024x768 (same as iPad 2)

- 7.22mm thin (as thin as a pencil)

- 0.68 pounds (as light as a pad of paper)

- comes in black and white

- iPad mini will start at £269 in the UK

- expected to started retailing on November 2nd

• A fourth generation of the iPad with an A6X processor, doubling graphics performance

• 100 million iPads have been sold in two and a half years

• A new ultra-thin iMac, with an edge that is 80% thinner than the previous generation

• An updated Mac mini with dual or quad-core i5 or i7 processor, with up to 16GB of RAM, Intel HD graphics 4000, Bluetooth 4.0 and either a 1TB HDD or 256GB SSD

• Both iMac and Mac Mini come with Apple Fusion Drive - 128GB flash storage and 1 or 3TB HDD

• New 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro - 20% thinner and one pound lighter than previous generation, costing $1699 in the US

• iBooks 3 with better iCloud integration and continuous scrolling

• As of last month, there were over 700,000 apps in the App Store

• 35 billion apps download from the App Store

• 28,000 iMessages are sent per second

• 200 million devices are now running iOS 6

• The iPhone 5 was the fastest selling phone in history, shifting more than 5m units in first weekend

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