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The New York Times makes a compelling case that Apple is working on a 7-inche tablet--at least as compelling as one can be when sourcing an article on “several people with knowledge of the project who declined to be named discussing confidential plans.”
Still, people with a vested interest in the arrival of a 7-inch iPad (to be precise, a 7.85-inch, according to the Times) on the market--say, businesses that would like to equip employees with the devices, or consumers that have put off a tablet purchase and think they’d like to wait for this version as a holiday gift this year--shouldn’t take the report as gospel, says Rob Walch, host of Today in iOS.
“I think this is something that people want to see on the market but I don’t think it would be worth Apple’s while to do it, at least not this year,” is his conclusion about the Times report.
The media sources Walch watches that generally get things right about Apple rumors—All Things D for example—have been silent on the issue, he says. “All due respect to the New York Times, they have been wrong about Apple in the past.”
The main reason Walch is pessimistic about a 7-inch iPad in the foreseeable future, though, is that the margins would probably not be to Apple’s liking. “The market still hasn’t proven that there is significant demand for a 7-inch,” he says. Well, Rob, what about the Amazon Kindle Fire? To this he reminds me that after the bump in sales it posted last holiday season, Amazon only sold 750,000 units in Q1.
Waiting to See How the Nexus 7 Does
And Amazon’s is arguably the most popular 7-inch tablet on the market. More dismal examples can easily be found: Dell, for example, discontinued web sales of its Streak 7 late last year, following the discontinuation of the even smaller 5-inch Streak tablet.
In the big picture, it is inevitable that Android tablet is going to shake Apple’s position—to cite just one data point, according to research released in June by IDG Connect, most users who intend to buy a device in the next 12 months plan to opt for an Android. And what device is most likely to make such inroads than the cheaper and more portable Nexus 7, which just came to market?
If Google’s latest endeavor shows serious signs of encroaching on Apple’s ownership of its category, though, the "big picture" will suddenly become less theoretical, at least for Apple. At that point, my bet is that it will re-evaluate its approach to margins and rethink the value of an additional 750,000 in unit sales.
