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Did Steve Jobs Pick the Wrong Tablet Size?

An anonymous reader writes "During the 2010 Christmas shopping season, Steve Jobs famously dissed the 7-inch tablets being rolled out by competitors, including Samsung's Galaxy, as being 'tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the [9.7-inch diagonal] iPad,' adding that 'the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival.' A year later Jobs was dead, and the iPad Mini, with a 7.9-inch diagonal screen, was rolled out under his successor Tim Cook in October, 2012. Looking at industry-wide tablet sales numbers for January 2013, which show that the iPad Mini surprisingly outsold its larger sibling by a substantial margin (as did 7-inch Android tablets from competitors), Motley Fool's Evan Niu thinks that the 7.9-inch form factor was the correct size all along, contrary to Jobs' pronouncements (which, of course, was partly marketing bluster — but he chose the larger size in the first place). Of course the Mini is cheaper, but not by much — $329 vs. $399 for the larger iPad, for the baseline model with WiFi only and 16GB storage. Had Apple introduced the iPad with the smaller size to begin with, Niu argues, competitors would have faced a much more difficult task grabbing market share. While the Mini is currently available only with 'Super VGA' resolution (1024x768), rumors are afloat that Minis with the Retina display (2048x1536) are close to production."

7 of 433 comments (clear)

  1. 16KB storage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    16KB storage: Apple is really screwing with the customer now.

    1. Re:16KB storage by skirmish666 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm waiting for the 128K model.

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      Sigger than your average
    2. Re:16KB storage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      640K ought to be enough for everybody!

      Yes, I do agree...hearing this fucking joke 640,000 times ought to be enough for everybody...

  2. Re:Does it matter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I here they make a really good spill chucker.

  3. Re:Not just a giant iPhone by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Funny

    You really should have thought carefully before writing the beginning of the sentence. Or maybe you did given the rest of the sentence.

  4. Re:Does it matter? by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Funny

    You sound just like my GF.

  5. Re:Does it matter? by gmhowell · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you hear her complaining, the ball gag isn't installed properly.

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    Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon