Report says 7 inch mini Apple iPad coming in October, to sport $200-$250 price tag

Every few weeks, speculation starts spreading about a mini version of the Apple iPad. Obviously a response to low-priced Android tablets, especially the $199.99 Amazon Kindle Fire, the rumors have centered on a 7.85 inch screen which is slightly larger than the 7 inch panel on Amazon's low-priced tablet. Now, a "reliable source," as characterized by websiteiMore, says that a 7 inch mini Apple iPad will hit the market in October, priced in a range of $200-$250. The site says that Apple wants to price the mini iPad aggressively so that there will be no room for the competition to come in lower.

The Amazon Kindle Fire was launched last November and quickly became the second highest selling tablet after the Apple iPad and the crew at Cupertino might be feeling Amazon's hot breath over its shoulder. The mini Apple iPad, outside of the screen size, will resemble its bigger brother in every way right down to the 2048-by-1536 resolution of the screen. Unlike the 16GB that the entry-level model of the new iPad offers, the smaller  variant will feature 8GB of native memory. A smaller version of Apple's popular tablet would have buyers ready to shell out cash. According to a survey from PriceGrabber, out of 2,603 Americans surveyed late last month, 52% would buy a scaled-down version of the Apple iPad.

While iMore's reliable source calls for the mini Apple iPad to hit the market in October, as we told you on Wednesday, DigiTimes reported that the 7 inch iPad would be launched in August with the next Apple iPhone coming the next month. We've heard these stories before, and while it is healthy to hope for the best, the more realistic action would be to wait for the official word from Apple on both the availability of a 7 inch version of its tablet and the launch of the next-gen Apple iPhone. The DigiTimes report says that the 7 inch tablet would be manufactured by Foxconn while the next iPhone and a 10 inch iPad to be launched during the fourth quarter would both be built by Pegatron.

source: iMore via PCMag