Has Apple made a mistake with the iPad Mini?

The iPad Mini has now been released and to me there are a number of glaring shortcomings which other tablet manufacturers can easily exploit as weaknesses. The first is the lack of the high quality retina display, the second is the lack of the GPS in the wireless only model and the third is the price.

For the iPad Mini to really succeed in my opinion it needed to produce a leading edge product and in this case it hasn’t. This could be deliberate. Had Apple provided the same retina display for the iPad Mini as they do for the New iPad (iPad 3/4) then it may have eaten into the full size iPad sales considerably. People wanting an iPad now have a choice based on the display. The problem however is with the lower resolution display the iPad Mini isn’t a leader and for Apple that isn’t a good thing.

Before the iPad Mini was released there was a lot of hype with regards to price. Prices as low as $199 were being bandied around in the media. When Apple released the original iPad they surprised me. Apple isn’t known for being a price leader and I felt they’d far exceeded my expectation on price in terms of setting a new lower price point. Apple has excellent margins on their devices, so even at the lower price point they still have great margins. However at $359 the price isn’t at the psychological price point of being under the $299 mark.

For me the one glaring omission is the entry level unit doesn’t come with GPS built in. I’ve read the chip to add 3G/GPS is just $20. The 3G could be disabled and the GPS left enabled and that would make the iPad Mini an excellent mapping device. Now to get GPS included in an iPad Mini it means a starting price of $509. The 16GB Nexus 7 with GPS is under half the price at $249.

Apple is no doubt in a hard place. Too cheap and the iPad Mini eats into either iPad sales or iPod Touch sales. Too expensive and people will seriously consider other brand products. The lack of a GPS built into the entry level iPad Mini is to me a serious limitation and once people become aware, sales could easily be affected.

If Apple is to remain untouchable in the marketplace they need to bring out leading edge products. If they don’t, other companies will.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au