No 7-inch iPad 2 in the Works Hints Apple’s CEO; Size Does Matter

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I showed you Apple’s Q4 2010 record quarter just in time for me to join in Apple’s quarterly earnings report. This time around, considering that Apple hit revenues of $20 billion for the first time ever, Steve Jobs decided to join Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer and he pretty much was the star of the show considering that analysts where rather more interested in his opinions on different matters.

After talking about the mobile competition, mainly RIM and Android, and referring, again to the advantages of mobile operating systems when it comes to open vs closed, he took a serious hit at the competition when it comes to tablet making.

The iPad’s main rivals seem to be, at least for now, Samsung’s 7-inch Galaxy Tab and RIM’s 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook. And Steve Jobs is either afraid of the competition, or really angry at 7-inch tablets. The way he referred to such devices strongly suggests that Apple will not make a 7-inch tablet any time soon.

The main reason for not considering such a product is, apparently, the actual size of the screen. 7-inch is not enough to express the software. In fact, Jobs did add that even Google advised Android tablet makers that current Android builds are not suitable with tablet designs. And apparently developers would have a hard time adjusting to all these new screen sizes. But he didn’t say anything about RIM’s new mobile OS that will power the BlackBerry tablet.

The screen is too small, and yes, it looks like inches do matter for Steve Jobs too, for the consumer to have an iPad-like experience on such tablets. Not to mention that, and we have been saying this for a while, these 7-inch tablets coming soon will cost more than the iPad. That’s definitely a factor to consider when considering what new tablet to buy.

So, it’s Steve Jobs belief that the “current crop of 7-inch tablets will be DOA: dead on arrival” and we’re definitely interested to see how the Samsung Galaxy Tab will do in the near future, especially since the Galaxy S did very well when it comes to sales with over 5 million units sold worldwide.

Oh and by the way, if Apple indeed does decide to make a 7-inch tablet then I’ll be one of the many analysts, because, at the end of the day, that’s what we are, aren’t we, that will remind Apple to throw in extra sandpaper “so that the users can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size” in order to deal with a 7-inch iPad tablet.