Apple’s iPad mini tablet may hit stores, arrive on doorsteps Nov. 2

October 19, 2012 - 2:54 pm | Category: Tech

The new tablet is expected to be announced by Apple in California next Tuesday. Little is known about it except that it will probably have a 7.85-inch screen – slightly smaller than the current iPad’s 10-inch display.

Even with this lack of information analysts are predicting that Apple will sell around five million iPad Minis before Christmas, assuming rumours of a November 2 release date are correct.

Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, told AllThingsD: “We believe that the smaller iPad could cannibalize one million regular iPad units in December or a rate of cannibalization at 20 percent. [So] for every five million smaller iPads, you lose one million standard iPads.”

The report also quotes Bill Choi, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott, who believes the smaller iPad will cannibalise just 15 per cent of sales of the existing iPad.

Just as it did with its iPod range, which slowly expanded to cover a range of form factors, storage capacities and prices, Apple is likely to take the view that it is better to cannibalise its own products that to give a competitor the chance to do it.