Ipad Mini comes with plus-size price tag
SAN JOSE, CALIF. – Apple Inc. is refusing to compete on price with its rivals in the tablet market, pricing its new, smaller iPad well above the competition.
On Tuesday, the company revealed the iPad Mini, with a screen that’s about two-thirds the size of the full-sized model, and said it will cost $329 (all figures US) and up.
Apple starts taking orders for the new model on Friday, said marketing chief Phil Schiller. Wi-Fi-only models will be available Nov. 2 and the company will add models capable of accessing “LTE” wireless data networks at a later date.
The price fits into the Apple product lineup between the iPad 2 at $399 and the latest version of the iPod touch at $299. But company watchers had been expecting Apple to price the iPad Mini at $250 to $300 to counter the threat of less expensive tablets like Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire, which starts at $159. Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook HD and Google Inc.’s Nexus 7 both start at $199.
Apple shares fell $14.83, or 2.3 per cent, to $619.20 when the price was announced. Shares of Barnes & Noble jumped 91 cents, or 6.3 per cent, to $15.35. Shares of Amazon.com were down 12 cents, or less than 0.1 per cent, at $233.66 while the rest of the stock market was in retreat.
When pre-orders start, the iPad Mini will be competing for the attention of gadget shoppers with the release of Windows 8, Microsoft’s new operating system.
The screen of the iPad Mini is 20 centimetres on the diagonal, making it larger than the 17.7-centimetre screens of the competitors. It also sports cameras on the front and back, which the competitors don’t. The mini is as thin as a pencil and weighs .31 kilograms, half as much as the full-sized iPad with its 24.6-centimetre screen, Schiller said.
“It’s not just a shrunken-down iPad, it’s an entirely new design,” Schiller said.
Company watchers have been expecting the iPad Mini for a year, and most of the details, except the price, had leaked out.
More surprisingly, Apple also said it’s upgrading its full-sized iPad tablet just six months after launching a new model, doubling the speed of the processor. Previously, the company has updated the iPad once a year. The fourth-generation iPad will have a better camera and work on more “LTE” wireless data networks around the world.
Apple is also replacing the 30-pin dock connector with the new, smaller “Lightning” connector introduced with the iPhone 5 a month ago.
The price of the new fullsized model stays the same as the previous version, starting at $499 for a Wi-Fi-only version with 16 gigabytes of memory.
Apple has sold more than 100 million iPads since April 2010. Analysts expect Apple to sell five million to 10 million iPad Minis before the year is out.