For those wanting an iPad Mini with Apple’s famous Retina Display, well, it is a bit of an expensive proposition. According to a latest report, the iPad Mini with Retina Display will cost $12 extra per piece to produce. This would consequently increase the overall cost of parts for the iPad Mini to over $200 per unit.
The Retina Display technology would mean that Apple would have to put in more LEDs into the screen to increase the resolution and brightness of the screen, which would make the overall production costs of the iPad Mini shoot up by 30 percent. But, consumers aren’t happy with the low resolution of the iPad Mini – 1024X768 pixels, which works out to a ppi count of just 162.
While Apple’s iPad continues to reign in the tablet market, the total share dropped from 70 percent during the beginning of 2012 to 44 percent in Q4 of 2012. This is also due to the consumers being offered a variety of low cost Android tablets with similar technical capabilities, like the Google Nexus 7.
Apple also needs to brace itself for more competition from Samsung, which is all set to bring out the Galaxy Note 8.0, an 8-inch tablet which will have S-Pen capabilities and similar features like the Galaxy Note II. The overall demand for tablets is expected to be in the range of 180-240 million units this year, 45-60 percent of which will comprise of 7-inch tablets.
