The elusive iPad Mini is, despite the setback of the announcement date having been incorrectly predicted, set to be arriving in the coming weeks, and although the specification of the device has seemed relatively assured for some time, pricing hasn’t. With the smaller slate supposedly preserving Apple’s dominance in fending off the growing list of cheaper tablets, the cost of the iPad Mini will be a large attributing factor to wither it serves its purpose, and a leaked snap of a German retailer’s internal database appears to have shed a little light on the matter.
Media Markt is a German retail chain similar, somewhat, to your Best Buy or Target stores found in the US, and its internal system suggests the cheapest (8GB Wi-Fi) model of the upcoming slate will be €249. Now, converted to dollars at the current exchange, that equates to $323, which is quite a bit higher than the $199 starting point of the Nexus 7 from Google / ASUS. Then again, $323 seems a bit of arbitrary figure, and with devices almost always cheaper Stateside, it may well be that the entry-level iPad Mini does indeed come in at $299.
I’ve never felt particularly confident Apple would be bringing out an iPad Mini, and although the Cupertino is expected to drop the slab sometime in the next month, there’s a growing sense of apprehension with every utterance of the scaled-down tablet.
Although the internal database looks as legitimate as any we’ve seen in the past, it’s not something that couldn’t perhaps have been cooked up by somebody with a little nous in the use of Photoshop or similar program. Prices cover 3G + Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi-only variants from 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB – in both colors – and this screams suspicion in my opinion. Why, if the sole purpose of the iPad Mini is to provide a cheaper alternative, offer sixteen different configurations – running all the way up to 64GB and costing €650 ($800+). Would you pay over 800 bucks for an iPad without – as we are led to believe – a Retina display? One which also packs in the good-yet-surpassed A5 dual-core SoC?
We’ll have to wait and see if and when Apple does finally hold this event, and when that news does finally arrive, we’ll have it right here at Redmond Pie – so stay tuned as usual!
(via MobileGeeks) (source Schimanke)
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