The iPad mini is finally here - but $329 price dismays some Apple fans
The new Apple iPad mini - a smaller, cheaper version of the iPad is finally here. Its aim: to keep customers from buying low-cost tablets from the competition.
But some thought the $329 starting price wasn't low enough to keep purchasers away from Samsung, Microsoft, Amazon and Google products.
At the mini's debut in San Jose, Apple CEO Tim Cook was super confident. “We know we are just getting started," he said."We are not taking our foot off the gas.” British designer Sir Jony Ive introduced the mini in the commercial you see here.
The iPad mini has a 7.9-inch screen diagonally, compared with 9.7-inches for the current iPad. .
Shares in Apple dropped 1.6 per cent over worries that that the price was not low enough to lure users from cheaper tablets, sellling for up to $130 less.
Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan agreed with the doubters. He told Bloomberg, “At $329, it won’t draw people from Kindles and Nooks.”
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Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach, said the price might be higher than some had hoped . "But We believe it will be a hit product given its lower price point.”
The new tablet is .68 pounds, about half the iPad 2, and has a battery life of 10 hours. Apple will start taking orders on Oct. 26 .
Apple also yesterday introduced a thinner iMac desktop , a more powerful Mac mini and a 13-inch notebook with a high-definition display.
The tablet market could double to $162 billion in the next five years said Bloomberg - and Apple, with 70 percent market share, wants to keep its lead, selling up to 7 million minis by the end of the year, according to Brian White, an analyst at Topeka Capital Markets.
Before his death last year, Steve Jobs said customers wouldn’t like having less screen space so the smaller iPad is a reversal .Since Jobs introduced the iPad in January 2010, more than 100 million have been sold.