Apple To Compete In 7-Inch Tablet Market With Mini iPad?

Mockup of 7.85-inch “iPad mini” next to iPad (courtesy of CiccareseDesign)

Rumors about a mini iPad are nothing new. But a recent report from Bloomberg has people talking about it once again.

iMore made a similar report back in May, stating that Apple was working towards an October launch for a smaller iPad, with the device carrying a display of roughly 7 inches and being priced in the $200-$250 range.

According to our source, which has proven reliable in the past, the reason for such aggressive pricing is to do to the tablet market what Apple did to the MP3 market in 2004 with the expansion of the iPod product line — leave absolutely no space for competitors.

Speculation about a smaller iPad has been fairly persistent, especially given the success of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and now the introduction of Google’s Nexus 7 tablet.

Smaller tablets were once out of the question at Apple, with the company’s late co-founder Steve Jobs famously saying that the iPad’s current size was the minimum required to ensure a good user-experience and enable attractive software applications.

But it’s possible that Apple has had a change of heart, deciding to jump into the smaller tablet market to ensure that they maintain dominance of the tablet market as a whole.

If Apple comes to market with a mini iPad, don’t expect to see a Retina Display. In order to keep costs down and the tablet profitable, it’s unlikely that they’ll include Retina Display in the smaller tablet.

We’ll have to wait until October to see how things play out!