Industry analysts have great expectations for the iPad Mini and to be frank, every new iPad from the last years was a hit. Pipper Jaffray analysts Gene Munster and Douglas Clinton claim that the most successful Android tablets had as differentiation points price and size. A cheaper iPad would make all the Android slates with low prices disappear from the radar.
As you probably know already, Apple is rumored to be preparing an iPad Mini for the holiday season. Experts expect the Cupertino giant to launch a 7-8 inch slate in time for the shopping season at the end of the year. If this is a sub $300 product, then Google and Android tablets are in trouble. Piper Jaffray is saying that Apple could sell as much as 4 to 6 million iPad Mini units during the holiday season, that means 20% of the total iPad sales in Q4. It will be interesting how the Nexus 7 from Google performs in the meantime, seeing that this 7 inch tablet model is also very cheap, at $199.
And there’s also the new Kindle Fire, supposed to come in a bunch of new versions, with yet another appealing price point. Microsoft is also on the map, with the Surface tablet coming this fall, but the price will certainly be higher. In order to compete with the likes of the Nexus 7 or iPad Mini you need a killer price point, that’s for sure.
