Earlier this week, yesterday to be exact, we reported on a research note from analyst Brian White who wrote that Apple is working on a smaller 7-inch iPad with a Retina Display, a mini-USB port, a camera, and 128 GB of storage. Notably, White wasn’t the first to mention a smaller form factor for Apple’s successful tablet as analyst Mingchi Kuo noted a few weeks ago that a 7-inch iPad from Apple had already been completed.
Adding his two cents into the equation, well-connected Apple blogger Jim Dalrymple chimes in and corroborates the claim that Apple is not just working on a 7-inch iPad, but that such a product already exists.
“The fact is, Apple already has a 7-inch iPad,” Dalrymple writes. “They have had one of the smaller devices since they started making the 9.7-inch iPad that we have now. To be clearer, the two devices were developed at the same time. They have pretty much the same specs, except, of course, the 9.7-inch model has a higher density screen than its smaller counterpart.”
Nearly a year ago, and well before Steve Jobs ever introduced the iPad, there were a number of rumors indicating that Apple’s iPad development saw the company experiment with a number of different form factors. That being the case, it really isn’t all that surprising that a 7-inch model of the iPad already exists, though whether or not Apple will end up releasing a smaller iPad remains to be seen.
October 8th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Talk about non-news, as a stockholder and a user of Apple products I would be sorely disappointed if they weren’t testing multiple devices of every form factor. Dell probably had a 9.7″ tablet, but Mikey probably passed on it because, unlike Micro$oft, he elected to do the opposite of what Steve and Company do.