Apple, the most valuable company in the world, will launch the iPad Mini in a few hours, a smaller tablet that Steve Jobs did not want initially, but he approved just before he died.
The late Steve Jobs didn’t want to create an iPad with a diagonal smaller than 9 inches. He stated in October 2010:
“One naturally thinks that a seven-inch screen would offer 70% of the benefits of a 10-inch screen. Unfortunately this is far from the truth. Screen measurements are diagonal. So that a seven-inch screen is only 45% as large as iPad’s 10-inch screen. You heard me right: Just 45% as large.
If you take an iPad and hold it up in portrait view, and draw a horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on seven-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the iPad display. This size isn’t efficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion…
There are clear limits of how close you can place physical elements on a touch screen, before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.”
But last year, shortly before he Jobs, Jobs agreed with Vice President Eddy Cue to create a mini iPad. The information was disclosed at the Apple – Samsung lawsuit.
Apple was forced to enter this segment after Amazon made headlines with its Kindle Fire tablet and Google launched the Nexus 7 tablet. Customers are interested in smaller tablets, but the price is very important. Amazon sells Kindle Fire at $199 and Google Nexus 7 has also a starting price of $199. Apple’s tablet will be presented today around 1 PM (EST) and it is rumored that it will have a screen with a diagonal of 7.85 inches (about 20 cm), and will cost around $300. iPad 2 costs $399 and iPod Touch is $199. Apple sold from March 2010 to date 84 million tablets.
[youtube]gFAjfUT8wZI[/youtube]
Reply