Apple Inc. “is developing a new tablet with a 7.85-inch screen that is likely to sell for significantly less than the latest $499 iPad, with its 9.7-inch display, according to several people with knowledge of the project who declined to be named discussing confidential plans,” Nick Wingfield and Nick Bilton report for The New York Times. “The product is expected to be announced this year.”
“Apple’s plan for a tablet with a smaller screen is part of a textbook business strategy: to lure customers who want different sizes of tablets into the iPad product family, say analysts and technology industry executives,” Wingfield and Bilton report. “The strategy would most likely include devices with different prices and functions tailored to various uses, they say. The idea is to help Apple solidify its dominance in the tablet market even as the richest companies in the tech business are trying to figure out how to outflank Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg. And, now, even The New York Times has sources. We’re rapidly exiting or, depending on your point of view, have already exited rumorville on a 7.85-inch tablet from Apple.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Bloomberg: Apple preps smaller iPad, sources say – July 5, 2012
WSJ: Apple’s ‘iPad mini’ launch nears – July 5, 2012
believe it when I see it, somehow I have trouble trusting the veracity of The New York Times.
There is no trouble, you just can not trust NYT, period. The same is with WSJ, though, since they published purely made up speculations, too.
There are no “reliable” media.
I don’t trust the NYTimes when it comes to political opinions, but I think the NYTimes, like the WSJ, has a reputation to protect and wouldn’t publish this article without having multiple internal sources at Apple.
The WSJ is known as Apple’s favorite outlet for leaking stories — the true ones. That’s based on the friendly relationship Steve Jobs had with the WSJ’s Walt Mossberg. So it’s no accident that the WSJ published essentially the same article (as did Bloomberg) over a week ago. The NYTimes is publishing the story now because last week’s WSJ story gave an unstated go-ahead to other Apple insiders to talk to their own media contacts. And the NYTimes is somewhere on that list. I think we’ll see a few more of these stories later in the week.
I hope it’s true but after all this is the NYT – and they can’t be trusted.
Perhaps you trust Chinadaily.com?
You need to use discretion with all media reports, from any source. Deprogram yourself, living life ignorantly brainwashed is a really sad way to live your life.
Well said. However, while you may disagree with their politics, and feel that perhaps they don’t have the best tech reporting, their general new reporting is still world class. But, don’t trust anyone and read multiple INDEPENDENT sources. And don’t bring up FOX, who is in the entertainment business.
You won’t believe the NYT but you’ll believe everyone or anyone else? I believe the noise makes it probable, but seeing is believing.
huh?
I’ll take one-if.
Is this related to “doubling down on secrecy”?
Inches shminches! (Fahrenheit Schmahrenheit!). Americans and their quaint ye olde units.
Apple’s seen the light: If it’s real, then it’s a 200 mm-diagonal screen tablet. Just as the existing one is a 250mm tablet. I predict the next variation (the new iPod touch?) will be 150mm or 5.9″ and next iPhone will be 100mm or 3.94″.
Inches shminches! (Fahrenheit Schmahrenheit!). Americans and their quaint ye olde units.
Tell you what, don’t like it to bad it exsits and serves us just fine okay, and what makes you so better anyway, all you are is an overzelious bozo spouting B.S.
Don’t like the units, Don’t let the preverbal door hit you on the Ass on your way out chump.
Next.
Hostile much? Geez!
enzos was just having a little fun, Oh boy. However, since you took things to another (lower) level, I prefer that your “standard units” posterior be the one that gets hit on the way out of the door.
You have hopefully noticed that SI units are already all over the place in the U.S., mostly in the form of dual units, but not always. Medicines, for instance, are in ml and mg, bicycle tires are 600c, etc.
So-called standard units suck for real work, such as engineering or construction… BTU/ft^2-hr, 3/64″, using “g” to correct for lbm, etc. I vastly prefer SI units that work well in a Base 10 numerical system (with the exception of hours, minutes, and seconds, of course).
Yeah, it’s a goddamn commie plot to steal the soul of American citizens!
MCO: “Houston, Houston…we have a problem. We’re coming in too low, much too low…
NASA: ” !!**foot/lb/inch **@!!
MCO: “fsck that, it’s a metric world…”
Crash and burn.
Apple leads.
Whatever they do it will not be to simply follow into the 7 inchish tablets just to fight off existing players.
Apple re-invents and blazes trails. If they release a 7.whatever iPad they’ll have a compelling case and it won’t be to simply keep up with the Jones (Google, Amazon)
Apple leads? Geez. Guess they invented the smart phone, mp3 player, tablet??? No, they just made them so that idiot can use one. I like Apple products, but I think your love for them renders your opinion useless.
We all know that there were types of MP3 player and smart phone before Apple launched theirs, but they were nothing like the Apple ones.
Once Apple showed the way, the other manufacturers tried to copy Apple, not the earlier products. They followed Applle’s lead and ignored the earlier attempts.
Lol you know nothing about me.
I’m a harsh apple critic and have as many PC’s at home as I do Macs. My background is the PC, its what I still do for a living.
I have zero apple stock and zero to gain by seeing them win. In fact being in IT you could almost argue I have much to lose if a company like MS loses.
Apple is exactly what they have railed against since the 1984 commercial. They practice a form of lock-in and control that makes IBM and MS look like saints in my opinion.
I have no love for them specifically but I do love technology and I’m not stupid enough to write off good tech due to some blind following of any company.
At the lowest technical level Apple didn’t invent much of what they have but they did innovate when all others sat on their asses.
To me Apple’s “inventions” are taking all these great ideas that have been created and bringing them together into a usable form that is simple and elegant.
They have re-invented a lot of existing tech into something better than it was and in many cases set the standard for how we as humans interact with computing platforms.
Multi-touch has been around for years, gestures were demoed in the early 80s yet before the iPhone they were nothing but neat ideas from acedamia with little real world application. Apple put that tech in the hands of millions and you don’t need a CS degree to use it.
That is no small feat and I use Apple products along with MS products and others. I use good technology when I see it and I see innovation from all companies to some degree. I just think that Apple has done more than the others as of late.
shut up.
Stop reading
No body read it.
Any time someone feels the need to preface their comment with their resume and years of experience means that what follows is psychobabble.
I’ll stop reading when you choose a side and stay there.
LOL! Of course Apple ‘leads’. To deny it is dillusional.
So, will this scale up retina display iPhone apps or scale down iPad apps?
People are generally of the consensus that it’s more logical that it run scaled up iPhone apps. No problems with available real estate that way. Who knows…
That’s an iPad I would like to have… Hopefully, Apple does not take the specs too low, to meet a $299 price tag. It should have at least 16GB of storage, not 8GB.
The 1024×768 resolution of the original iPad display would be great, compressed about 20% to fit an 8-inch screen. That’s about 160 pixels per inch, which is the same as the original iPhone (through 3GS) screen. It will be a bit sharper than the iPad 2 display, without the expense of making it “retina.”
Reducing the diagonal size by 20% will probably reduce the weight by 40% (with thickness remaining the same). That would actually be the MOST welcome difference…
This is going to happen. Too many reports coming in from WSJ and other sources. And, it makes exonomic sense. Why concede the small tablet market to competitors hocking inferior products and let them establish a foothold, even a tenuous one? Apple rightly sees an opportunity to grow the iOS user base and consolidate its hold on the sector. And when the iPad mini is released, it will be Game over in the tablet market. The only segment left to cater to in the market will be a small coterie of IT managers and Windows zealots who can’t live without Office and insist that their tablet be able to run it. They’ll buy a Surface, or whatever it’s actually eventually sold as.
The 99% of users who use their devices for web browsing, e-mail, games, apps, learning, movies, music and e-books/magaZines will buy an iPad.
I wonder if it will be 16:9
I’m sure it will remain 4×3.
what’s NYT’s strategy of lying about the iPad’s current entry price for?
Yeah, I am with the rest when they say, I’ll believe it when I see it. The rumor has been going on since 2010, this rumor is like a well worn path with ruts in it.
Im skeptical at best. Steve Jobs pretty clearly railed against the 7 inch form factor. And haven’t we already seen this experiment with the Kindle Fire?
I think Tim Cook spoke against smaller tablets, too. I don’t remember where; maybe it was at the AllThingsD conference. Apple is already destroying everyone else in tablets; I say they should worry about phones more. Still, Apple doesn’t care about share as much as a great experience.
Blah, blah, blah, “inside sources”, blah blah blah . . . .