Tim Bray: Apple Will Do 7-Inch Tablet Eventually [Despite Steve Jobs' Stance Against 7-Inch Tablets, Google's Android Ambassador Says That The Cupertino Company Will Need To Do A 7-Inch iPad To Fill The Void]

Posted on TFTS by Kevin Schram on Thursday, 30. December 2010 under: Mobile/Cell Phones, PCs, Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets

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.

Source

Ricardo Domingos
I think the portability of a 7 inch iPad is a great point to be considered by Apple.
Bob
The ipad’s weight, portability, connectivity and iTunes ecosystem clearly render the device transformational. A seven inch version would likely be yet another very positive evolution – breast pocket or hip holster extension of this bundle of joy and innovation that would likely find all kinds of enterprise and consumer niche markets. It’s so painfully obvious that one wonders whether ther was a secret deal with some of Apple’s Asian contract manufacturers to leave this niche to them so they could establish some traction before Apple entered this space.
Yes I would buy this ipad form factor in a flash – excuse the pun.