I disagree. Apple currently offers 4" and 10" iPads (I'm going back to my points that the iPod Touch and the iPhone are essentially smaller versions of the iPad).
Adding a 7.85" in the mix, at the pricepoints theorized, is just going to muddy the waters. Think about...as a consumer you're going to see a Touch, a Phone, and 2 iPads...3 of those 4 devices sit in the $249 - $299 range. Now you create/find a comparison chart of the features. Pretty much all the same features except for sizes and the ability to make a phone call. People are not necessarily going to buy the iPad Mini. The 4" models fit in your pocket. The 10" isn't that much larger than a 7.85" inch...neither are going to fit in your pocket and maybe not even a woman's purse.
Being slightly larger here and there (and I'm sure Apple will muck around with the features, too, so they can keep their hefty margins) isn't going to attract loads of people.
As I said, the iPods (and I believe iPhones) all dropped in price as they matured. Next is Gen 4 of iPad...I think the 10" is a great size FOR A TABLET...they would be much smarter to drop the price $50-$100 (or add a lower-low end for that discount) than create a whole new "line" of iPads supposedly aimed at size-conscious folks who can't bear to hold the extra 2" of space and still smaller than a standard 8.5"x11" sheet of paper.
The Kindle is not a tablet...it's definitely an e-book reader and the physical size completely warrants its definition. The Kindle Fire more of a tablet but still centered around e-books. The iPad is a flat-out tablet with almost 0 concentration....it does a lot of things quite well (thanks to years/generations of Touch and iPhone feedback).
But alas, maybe Apple will create 9 different versions of the iPad just like they do of the iPod.
Not a big deal but the iPhone is only 3.5" and the current iPad is only 9.7" People are calling for a 4" iPhone, I don't happen to be one of them. I a good size guy and have above average size hands and having a 4" or bigger device makes one handed operation difficult, if not impossible for people with smaller hands. Also, carrying a bigger device one's pants pocket becomes more difficult / uncomfortable.
Now the current iPads are great at what they do but the majority of people that use them, after the initial "look what I can do on it period" are using them for web surfing, movies, books, games, facebook... Stuff that can easily be done on an iPhone but they're choosing to do that on the iPad. In my case, I pick up the iPad (original) because of the larger screen and battery life vs using my iPhone. When I type something it's a pain in the butt and holding onto the iPad for an hour or more gets tiresome. Based on many of the posts here, there are plenty of people that would gladly pay $299 for a 7.85" device.
It's not fair to say that it's about the same price as an iPhone and that someone would buy one over the other. They might buy one OR the other but the main solution they provide is completely different. What's most obvious is the phone part. No one is going to use a 7.85" device as their every day phone. Don't forget that the $199 for an iPhone is a subsidized price and you're locked into a voice and data contract with it. So the cost of ownership over the course of two years for my iPhone is in the ballpark of $2500. $299 < $2,500.
A smaller iPad may eat sales of the iPod Touch and I could be wrong here but haven't sales slowed down there? Maybe because there hasn't been a hardware refresh in a while but whatever the reason, I don't believe there is as much of a market for the iPod Touch if there was a $299 7.85" iPad.
There are plenty of people out there that don't want to hold an extra 2" in their hand and you shouldn't just compare this only to the Fire. There are other 7" Android devices and it just happens to be one of the most successful non iOS tablets. It does a decent job with the web surfing, movie watching, book reading, game playing and facebooking that the majority of iPad owners would want to do.
Just because you don't see yourself using one doesn't mean others wouldn't want it. Look at the responses for yourself....
