On 23rd October 2012, Apple announced its new 7.9-inch tablet: iPad Mini. It will be available to pre-order on 26th October (this Friday) and shipped on 2nd November. It measures 7.9 inches diagonally, weighs 0.68 pounds, is 7.2 mm thick and carries a screen resolution of 1024x768. It will be entering an increasingly crowded market of smaller 7-inch tablets (though iPad Mini is obviously slightly bigger) and is Apple's first major acknowledgment that it has competition it needs to compete with. Though the iPad Mini will surely be yet enough quality-made product from Apple, it may need to try harder if it wants to compete against budget-priced competitors. Apple's decision to stream yesterdays new product announcements (particularly its iPad Mini) solely to people with access to Apple TV suggests that theyre still pandering to an insular (though admittedly large) fan-base and not people who have never purchased an Apple product before. The pricing of the iPad Mini also reflects this to an extent, and strongly implies that the miniature iPad is a reactionary business tactic as opposed to a stridently new and innovative creation meant to appeal to new customers and not ardent Apple tech-adopters. But I think this is where Apple have made things possibly quite difficult for themselves: charging £269 for iPad Mini in an attempt to derail rivals from taking market share is a little confusing when you consider that competitive pricing is what drives the 7-inch tablet market in the first place. I dont doubt that Apples brand name alone is enough to trouble and potentially steal sales from Amazons Kindle Fire HD (released 25th October in the UK for £159), though I do think that the market that Amazon and Google (with their Nexus 7 tablet) are proffering their products to is not quite the same one that Apple think their iPad Mini will be muscling in on. I think that the iPad Minis £269 price-tag can be justified in comparison to its less expensive competition when you consider the inclusion of a 5 mega-pixel camera, though in terms of other raw technical specifications it either just matches or falls behind the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD. The massive selection of apps that Apple offers also proves tempting, though I fail to understand why Apple couldnt just have charged a sub-£200 price-tag for the iPad Mini and make up for the profit loss through content sold via its App Store. This is especially true if you consider iPad Mini as a device devised for greater content consumption (iBooks etc.) along similar lines as Amazon's Kindle Fire HD. It seems that Apple want to defend their market share against growing competition but arent quite prepared to shed their premium-priced image for fear of devaluing their brand: they are trying to have it both ways and will be expecting their current consumer-base to buy up (and indeed, buoy up) any potential floundering response from non-traditional Apple consumers. A key selling-point for iPad Mini is in trying to promote its educational use, and therefore its selling power when it comes to educational institutions that will snap it up to modernise the teaching environment. If this is Apples real reason for creating a smaller iPad, then it makes a lot of sense. On a wider commercial scale the iPad Mini becomes a less coherent prospect, in terms of pricing and functional use: its specifications mean that for all intents and purposes it is a smaller iPad 2. A step backwards from the cutting edge of technology is not something we usually see with Apple, and further makes me think that the iPad Mini was always in some way intended to be marketed towards an audience that were not prepared to pay the premium for the latest tech-wizardry, like the newest iPads retina display technology. I also think that the iPad Mini will provide a very interesting turning point for Apple as a company, especially if it fails to put a noticeable bite-mark into the pie-chart of their rivals burgeoning market share.