Once upon a time, I had an argument with a coworker about whether or not Apple was making a 7-inch iPad. It went something like this:
“Apple is making a 7-inch iPad.”
“No they aren’t, you are dumb.”
“Of course they are, how else will they compete with the 7-inch Blackberry Playbook?”
Fast-forward two-and-a-half years and it becomes clear to all that my coworker is eating more hat than a face-hugger at a Limp Bizkit concert.
Analysts like to get their names seen by predicting what companies- especially companies like Apple - are up to. Sometimes they back up their hypothesis with facts, leaks, and anonymous sources. Sometimes they just flail their arms around like Zangief on a bad LSD trip.
This is the reason, year after year, we have to read about Apple’s inevitable 7” tablet, and why every year I have to field calls from friends asking me when a product that doesn’t exist is going to start existing.
First of all, I don't believe the iPad Mini exists, and I don't think it will ever exist. I think someone in Apple is intentionally floating false rumors so people won't buy Nexus 7's. But some very reputable sources seem to think it's a done deal. The iPad Mini could be coming to a fancy glass store near you as early as this fall.
Of course, I don’t know anything you don’t, but I feel like I know a whole Hell of a lot more than analysts who say Apple must position themselves against the Nexus 7s, the Kindle Fires, and other products that are so far behind Apple in terms of sales, that they aren’t even directly competing with the iPad.
Like it or not, the current slew of 7-inch tablets are competing for second place.
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Apple has never been in the business of competing for the low-end.
The argument I keep hearing is that for some reason Apple isn’t content with simply dominating a market they created a mere two+ years ago, but that they also must own the offshoots. A 7.85” iPad would compete with the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 and become king of the lower end of the market. But it would mostly compete with the 10” iPad, and therein lies the problem.
Apple has never been in the business of competing for the low-end. Apple makes high-quality products at high price points, and it appears to me that strategy is working out just fine for them.
Furthermore, the iPad already has more SKU’s than a game of Scrabble. There are currently 18 versions of the new iPad(!), and six versions of the iPad 2, all of which are on sale simultaneously. Customers not only have to choose color, they have to choose carrier and size. Another version of the tablet would make choosing between tablets even more confusing to consumers and, more importantly, cannibalize their own 10” tablet sales.
That's the really important part: by making a 7-inch tablet, Apple would be implicitly stating that the 7-inch form factor is important, and if that's the case, how could you be sure the 10” iPad was really the ultimate tablet experience? It's not just my own opinion that a 10" tablet is a far superior experience to a 7-inch.
Steve Jobs famously repudiated 7-inch tablets in 2010 with some very choice words, including:
- "This size is useless unless you include sandpaper so users can sand their fingers down to a quarter of their size."
- "...We think the screen is too small to express the software. As a software driven company, we think about the software strategies first."
- "7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad."
- "We don't think you can make a great tablet with a 7-inch screen."
That’s not to say the iPad Mini is some entirely fabricated impossibility, just that Apple shouldn't make it.
If recent rumors are to be believed, Apple will try out a new size for their next iPhone. We may very well see the rise of the 4” iPhone later this year (sidenote: this likely won’t be called the iPhone 5, because it’s the sixth generation iPhone). Up until now, Apple has stuck to their 3.5” guns, and has had an incredibly successful run.
In order to see why Apple would upsize their phone, one must first understand that the first iPhone was huge. But in the last five years, the general public has adopted larger phones. In fact, every flagship phone is currently larger than the iPhone – The Galaxy S3 at 4.8”, the HTC One X at 4.7”, the Nokia Lumia 900 at 4.3”.
Apple’s little 3.5” seems undeniably compact – which is a good place to be, separated from the competition, but it also shows the general public is ready and willing for larger phones. By trimming the top and bottom borders up a bit, Apple could create an iPhone that was bigger but not a lot larger.
The tablet market, on the other hand, is a different beast. The iPad is winning the tablet wars with a brilliant display and a solid, but not cheap, price tag. While no company should rest on their laurels while competitors play catch up, the introduction of a 7-inch Apple-brand tablet would cause more problems than it's worth.
What do you think? Should Apple make a 7-inch tablet in addition to their 9.7-inch iPad?
Nic is the Editor of IGN Tech. He loves technology almost as much as Wall-E, Boyz II Men, and Fable 1. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
