“Apple Inc. plans to debut a smaller, cheaper iPad by year-end, two people with knowledge of the plans said, to help maintain dominance of the tablet market as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. prepare competing handheld devices,” Peter Burrows and Adam Satariano report for Bloomberg.
“The new model will have a screen that’s 7 inches to 8 inches diagonally, less than the current 9.7-inch version, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Apple hasn’t made its plans public,” Burrows and Satariano report. “The product, which Apple may announce by October, won’t have the high-definition screen featured on the iPad that was released in March, one of the people said.”
Burrows and Satariano report, “A smaller, less expensive iPad could undercut the ambitions of Google, Microsoft and Amazon.com Inc. to gain traction in the advancing tablet market, said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach Inc. The new device will probably have a price closer to Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and Amazon’s Kindle Fire, both of which have 7-inch screens and cost $199. ‘It would be the competitors’ worst nightmare,’ Wu said in an interview… Apple benefits from having more than 225,000 apps that have been tailored specifically for the current iPad… The company also boasts more than 360 retail stores where the device can be purchased and tested by consumers. Google said the Nexus 7 will be available only from its online store, while Microsoft will sell its tablets online and at its smaller chain of 20 stores.”
Read more in the full article here.
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