We know that plenty of potential iPad mini customers are dreaming about a price around the $200 mark, and the possibility of this while keeping Apple’s iPad mini features similar to the current model although this won’t be an easy task. We’d like to see the iPad mini price down to this level, but recent rumors point to the hardware costing almost this much to make without any markup, and if these claims are wrong then it would be some achievement by Apple.
Delivering certain iPad mini features — We’d like to see an LTE model and know this could be a dealbreaker for some people, although there would likely be a change to the new Micro SIM seen in the iPhone 5. Tech enthusiasts might point out that it isn’t that hard to convert types of SIMS, which is thanks to the difference mainly being plastic around the actual chip.
Trying to create a cheaper iPad mini could mean sacrificing certain features, but what abilities would you like to downgrade or lose? This choice will be different for each user depending on what you’d want to use an iPad mini for, and while we know Apple has a large profit margin on most products, we wonder if they’d be willing to decrease profits in the interest of taking over the 7-inch tablet market?
Apple is able to demand higher prices thanks to their popularity, so will they just launch an iPad mini with a price that is still way above the competition? The reason this is risky for Apple would be the way things are changing, and this includes more competition since their first iPad launched a few years ago.
In our opinion Apple need to make a change and lower that profit margin a little by delivering an iPad mini price that lands around the $200 mark, and if they don’t then we could see Android ruling this smaller tablet market indefinitely. We know that Steve Job’s believed that it is better to “cannibalize” your own product than to let the competition do it, although we wonder if Apple still remember this? It makes good business sense to lose a little to the iPad mini and offer the larger iPad as a premium product, although we can’t help but feel that Apple will launch the iPad mini with a price still much higher than the Google Nexus 7, Amazon Kindle Fire HD, Galaxy Tab 2, and other $200 priced tablets.
Do you feel Apple will just release the iPad mini at a higher price? If they did drop the price to nearer the competition, what iPad mini features would you still expect with a $200 price? We’ll be bringing you all the official specs next week at the planned event, and also the release date and shipping information when we see the announcement.
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