All iPads The real reason for the new iPad mini retina and Air prices

[macguy360]

You can look up articles over this past year comparing iPad mini to regular iPad sales. After Apple released the iPad mini, regular iPad sales dropped like a rock. iPad mini completely destroyed iPad sales because people could get an iPad for $329 that was portable and easy to carry around.

An educated guess would say that Apple conducted research to identify at what price points customers would be likely to purchase a full sized iPad over a mini and found that at $100, customers would be more likely to go ahead and purchase a full size iPad, hence the new price setup for the iPad air and mini.

Apple is hoping that customers will consider the decreased weight of the iPad air along with the $100 difference and go ahead and buy a larger iPad air over an iPad mini.

What we will see over the next year are balanced sales of both iPad mini retina and iPad Air.

 

[freediverdude]

I tend to agree that this might be a reason to go ahead and include the same specs in both models and make them more similar in price, to even out the model sales. Otherwise it makes it look like the mini is cannibalizing the full size iPad, which it was.

 

[Aluminum213]

It really doesn't help iPad sales that the iPad Mini with retina is equally powerful

 

[Lukkee24]

If they didn't want the mini to sell as well as the air, then surely they wouldn't have given the mini A7 and so on.

 

[zhenya]

Did you completely miss this front page story yesterday?

The iPad Mini did not 'completely destroy' iPad sales. Quite the opposite actually.

The retina mini is more expensive because it now has the high resolution screen AND the same internals as the regular iPad.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Revisionist history! IPads dropped b/c the 4 was introduced. This happens every time a new iPad is released -- check out iPad 4 prices from two months ago & compare with today. Same phenomena occurs with Macs, dSLRs, cars, & almost every other product with resale value.

 

[jclardy]

I think that is part of the case - I think originally apple wanted the mini to be cheaper and a generation behind to keep costs down. But that is not what people wanted, so instead they matched the specs.

If the retina mini was $329 with an A7 no one would pay $170 for a larger screen.

 

[ElectronGuru]

It really doesn't help iPad sales that the iPad Mini with retina is equally powerful

This. It's easy to think there is an ulterior motive. But it's as simple as 1) first time around apple thought the price had to be low for a small device (Americans associate size with value) so they cut the specs AND cut their margin. 2) Sales were much better than expected and people wanted the size just for the size and they got complaints on performance (I know I sent at least one). So second time around they've thrown caution (and budget) to the wind and made a full spec mini.

 

[LizKat]

It really doesn't help iPad sales that the iPad Mini with retina is equally powerful

Wait and see. Some like the larger display. Some like larger virtual keyboard. The array they're selling now looks like will balance out great.

If I were not so determined to get retina and cell-capable for my iPad mini slot now, I would be really torn to decide which machine to upgrade this year. I would love to have the 128GB larger iPad. That will be next year's goal for me, I'd be deep in the red zone now if I did that one too, having done my iPhone upgrade this year. So it's iPad mini upgrade this year for me, but maybe only because the 4S to 5C upgrade happened to get to my budget first.

If my original iPad mini had already come with the retina, and the current upgrades were as they are now offered, I'd truly go nuts trying to decide. There is so much draw for the two main but competing aspects of this stuff: 1) greater portability and 2) larger screen size. Far from cannabilizing their market for tablets, I think Apple will end up over time with households full of both sizes.