iPad Mini to Retail for Significantly Lower Than $499?

By Vincent Funaro, Christian Post Reporter Monday, July 16, 2012

Apple will be releasing a smaller version of the iPad that is significantly cheaper than the current version, according to a recent report from The New York Times.

"The company 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," said the highly reliable publication, which cited several people with knowledge of the product for its information source.

The New York Times also stated that the product should be announced sometime before the end of this year.

Bloomberg offered a similar report two weeks ago.

The publication spoke to some Apple insiders who stated that this new smaller iPad will feature a screen that is 7 to 8 inches diagonally, and will not have the same HD Retina display featured on the third-generation Apple tablet.

Instead, its display will have the same number of pixels as the second generation model, giving it a resolution of 1024 x 768.

By using the same resolution as the larger iPad on the new mini, fragmentation will be minimized for developers who already need to target their apps for both iPad and iPhone sizes. However, the higher pixel density will make the content appear smaller on the mini iPad

Bloomberg's report also revealed that Apple's plans to create an iPad Mini have been in the works since the original Apple tablet was released in 2010.

However, Steve Jobs did not believe that competition would rise up for the iPad in the form of low-cost 7-inch tablets. But with the introduction of the Amazon Kindle Fire, and the new Google Nexus 7, the landscape of the market has changed significantly and Apple seems to be adjusting to the times by working on a small iPad that could potentially crush those competitors.