Lastly, I expect the price to be about the same as the 10" ($499.95). It might be as low as $399.95, but I doubt it. Apple can justify the price since it will have a better quality display (Retina, OLED or AMOLED), at least one camera (probably front for Facetime), 512 RAM, gyroscope, and etc.
That would be a bad sign since all of those updates 512 RAM , two cameras (facetime seems to require two ) , gyroscope , etc. would be logical updates for the next iPad. if those "justify" a $100 increase in price then the iPad would increase $100 on next round.
The $399.95 price could work. That is a 64GB Touch. The $399.95 iPad mini would likely only have 16GB (and perhaps as little as 8GB ) of storage.
The customer trade-off is whether they need storage or whether they want the screen space.
However, it violates Apple's "no overlapping price" rule. Overlapping on the high end though indicates that iPad would probably later move up. Whereas overlapping on the low edge , on $399, probably means the Touch would later move down. The touch should move down at some point. It is just a substantially smaller device and screen using many of the same parts.
The lower level ipods are in the way of its dropping in price. They too though a year from now could slide down a bit.
It almost makes me think Apple deliberately crippled the 10" from the start anticipating the 7" release.
Don't think it was crippled. Much more likely they wanted to limit the complexity so that had something that worked well when shipped it. Notice iPad had no Antennagate drama to go through as it ramped up. So they kept version 1 as simple as possible.
With version 2 they can start incrementally evolving the iPad. They will have a much better idea now if how many components need and that the core elements of the iPad work. If there is a glitch in adding one of those extras then the iPad already has tons of momentum. That would be a minor speed bump. If the iPad had been hit with an Antennagate sizesd dust up as it came out of the gate it would have taken a relatively much bigger hit in momentum. In year 2, iPad could take a hit and not really slow down much. (just like iPhone has ) .
I doubt iPad gets a "Retina display" though. 4" is one thing and was significant leap in size of displays with that density. Almost doubling to 7-10" in less than a year is very unlikely. It is not that easy.
Also unlikely will be OLED or AMOLED since Jobs just got through trashing those. LOL.
