Tim Bray: Apple Will Do 7-Inch Tablet Eventually

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Earlier this year, during an earnings call, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was pretty adamant that 7-inch tablets would be “dead on arrival” and went on to say that basically, they were just manufacturers creating a format that nobody wanted. Now, we’ve had the Samsung Galaxy Tab and we (and others) reviewed the device and found it awesome. Now, Tim Bray, a notable computer scientist and current Android Developer Advocate at Google, says that Apple will “totally” do a 7-inch iPad one day.

Bray, speaking on his own behalf and not for Google, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Apple will and should come out with a smaller 7-inch tablet. Bray told the paper:

Anyone who’s spent quality time reading books or playing games on the Galaxy Tab knows; there’s a great big hole in the ecosystem that needs something bigger than a handset but that still fits in one hand and you can use for four hours in a row sitting up. This argument is over.

Samsung, Acer, Dell and others have made public their plans to release multiple tablets, one in each ‘size’ and French company Archos has already done their with their low-price tablets. It looks like everybody but Apple will be offering tablets in different sizes, with the big three being the 4.3-inch Dell Streak/EVO 4G range, the 7-inch Galaxy Tab range and the 10-inch iPad range. So, will Apple give up and stick to the 10-inch range? No iPad nano?

The SF Chronicle makes a good point – a 7-inch iOS device would just fragment the app market even further. Yes, fragmentation on the iOS platform. Developers right now have four different versions of the iPhone to develop for (how many new apps come out for the iPhone 2G?), plus the 10-inch iPad. While iPhone apps can be scaled up to use at 10-inches, some of them don’t look so hot. So that creates a market fragment for 10-inch apps. A 7-inch iPad Nano would just create another market fragment for the platform.

Do you think Apple should create a 7-inch iPad Nano (as we’ve taken to calling them)? Would you buy such a device? As I noted in my review of the Galaxy Tab, while the 7-inches doesn’t seem like enough screen, especially if you’re used to the iPad, take time with it and it really seems nice, specially considering the extra portability you gain. Anyway, I want to hear in the comments if you’d be interested in a 7-inch iPad.