That's not planned obsolescence. It's the reality of technical progress holding Apple back. There was no way Apple could make a 7.9" tablet with a 2048x1536 display that's light, thin and/or cost $329.
You’re very right, it's margins are supposedly much lower than other iDevices and a display at that res would cost a lot more. I was just being a little jaded in my opinion
Anyway, personally I’d sooner see them break their x2 resolution mantra and add the mini at a 3rd resolution / size target.
In a year or two, I guess there will be two situations; Either the mini pixel doubles and has the same ~326ppi as the iPhone, or they bring it in line with the 264ppi in the iPad.
Situation A is great for the mini, but leaves the iPad with an inferior resolution to its cheaper, smaller brother (and at this point in time I cant see the iPad pixel doubling to come in at a whopping 528ppi!
Situation B means the mini has to come in at a separate screen / resolution target which is good for customers, because devs have to create a proper iPad mini ‘target’ rather than just scaling down the iPad experience.
Or perhaps situation C - they change all their ppis to some other incredible number and they just use the OS to scale the user interface elements to the right size, (somewhat as they do with the rMBP, giving the user some flexibility in how they use their pixels.) At these really high ppi’s not many people will appreciate if their UI elements and images are not optimised unless they get out a jewellers loupe!
Any thoughts?