With Apple and Microsoft both teasing their upcoming tablet launches earlier this morning and Microsoft finally announcing price points for its iPad contender, we are beginning to wonder just how competitive price-wise the iPad mini is going to be against other products, seven-inchers in particular.
Apple has economies of scale playing to its favor which it readily exploited to deliver the original iPad, billing it as a "magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price" at then unheard-of $499. A lot has changed since 2010.
Nowadays, for half the price one can get a perfectly capable seven-inch Nexus 7 tablet from Google with sixteen gigabytes of storage ($199 for the eight gig version). It doesn't run your App Store apps, lacks the iPad's build quality and skimps on certain hardware features, but otherwise is a pretty decent tablet. And with Android Jelly Bean running on Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 processor, Google's tablet certainly is no slouch.
There's also the new Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon (it sells at cost). With those inexpensive devices rapidly picking up steam and catching up on the iPad, no wonder Apple had to respond. Now, the third-generation 9.7-inch iPad begins at $499 and goes all the way up to $839 for the flagship 64GB model with 4G LTE networking.
The company also kept the previous-generation iPad 2 with 16 gigabytes of storage and WiFi-only networking at a reduced price of $399, a hundred bucks cheaper than before. Which brings us to today's poll: where should a small-factor iPad start at?
