Rumour mill alive with scaled down iPad despite Steve Jobs scorning idea

There's a constantly spinning mill of rumours about Apple products, most of which become untrue. What's unusual this week is that speak has revived of a smaller iPad model, an concept company founder Steve Jobs derided publicly a year before he died.

Apple and its suppliers aren't commenting. Rumours of a smaller iPad, or "iPad mini" have percolated ever because the iPad was launched two years ago. This time around, they're fed by media reports from South Korea, China and Taiwan, saying Apple has ordered Samsung screens which are 7.86 inches measured at the diagonal. That might make for a screen about half the dimensions of the current iPad, which has a diagonal measurement of 9.7 inches.

A smaller tablet would help Apple further its lead inside the tablet market.

"From a competitive standpoint, we believe an iPad mini with a lower cost point stands out as the competition's worst nightmare," says Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee. "Most [competitors] have already got a tricky enough time competing against the iPad 2, in addition to the recent iPad." Last year, Amazon.com found out easy methods to crack Apple's stranglehold on tablets by creating a half-size, no-frills tablet.

The result was the Kindle Fire, which sells for US$199 ($245), basically the price of production. Amazon has sold millions of them.

It can be hard for Apple to earn money from an iPad-quality 18cm tablet that sells for US$299. Analysts at IHS iSuppli estimate that a smaller tablet would cost around US$250 to supply, a figure that does not include development costs, packaging or patent royalties. A smaller iPad will be a headache for software developers.

"Going to another screen size finally ends up being a ton of labor," says Nate Weiner, the creator of Pocket, an application that stores internet sites and other material for later reading.

"In case you take, to illustrate, an interface built for the iPad and check out to cram it into the Kindle Fire, it just doesn't fit," he says.

Jobs made a unprecedented appearance on an October 2010 earnings conference call to launch a tirade against the 7-inch tablet Samsung was set to launch because the first main challenger to the iPad.

"The explanation we wouldn't make a 7-inch tablet isn't because we do not hit a worth point, reason why we do not think you may make an outstanding tablet with a 7-inch screen," Jobs said. "The 7-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad."

He said the resolution of the display may be increased but that could be "meaningless, unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, in order that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of the current size."

Jobs did not mention Apple's success developing iPhone apps.

- AP

By Peter Svensson