Apple Inc. has the leading product in the tablet market with the iPad. They were the first out of the starting blocks into this new and now huge market for computers you can have with you at all times. Apple do however need to keep changing and innovating the products in this market, that they created, to stay ahead of the growing competition and retain and increase market share.
Apple have always been good at reading the market and they have obviously spent a lot of money and spent a lot of time listening to what people want in the tablet market. It was just such knowledge and research that prompted the company to follow up the iPad release with an addition, in the form of a smaller unit, the iPad Mini.
So what is the difference between the iPad and the iPad Mini? Well in a word, it is, size. As both sizes of iPad have been a commercial success for the company it would seem that here are different customers in the tablet market that are after different size screens. In this case significantly different size screens. Now that Apple has established this, a problem emerges. What to do next?
Any excitement around updates to the iPad is hard to find. Maybe because the main point of discussion is whether it will have a smaller bevel around the edge of the screen. For the iPad Mini it is only a little more exciting in the fact of it might receive a retina display. Neither point is really going to generate much excitement for the likely updates in the fall.
Now that the tablet market has been established and companies have more or less settled on the size and form of their tablets, the race is now on to find the next new thing within the operating systems running on the tablets. Apples WWD Conference presentation on the new iOS7 looks extremely well timed.
