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(Image source: Gizmodo)
BY ELIZABETH HAGEDORN ANCHOR ZACH TOOMBS
One month after Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, the rumor now is that the tech giant is
set to launch the iPad Mini.
This all comes after Apple sent out invites like this one
for a media event on October 23rd in San Jose.
Speculation has been growing for weeks that a cheaper, smaller tablet from Apple is in
the works to help compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire and the Google Nexus 7. The rumored
iPad is said to be about half the size of the original and run somewhere between $300-$500.
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that some of Apple’s suppliers
in Asia had already received orders and started producing 10 million units of the iPad Mini.
That figure, the Journal says, suggests that Apple expects a huge demand for its new product.
And if that weren’t proof enough, a writer for Gizmodo points out that the
invitation itself offers hints of an iPad Mini.
“This one seems to fall a little in between; the ‘little’ pretty obviously refers to
the iPad Mini's smaller size, but if we feel like reading a little further into it, an
invitation with this much flair could mean Apple's tiny tablet could come in an array
of iPod touch-like color.”
But the iPad Mini isn’t the only product Apple could debut. Nine to 5 Mac reports Apple
may reveal a redesigned iMac desktop computer, an even smaller Mac mini computer, and a 13-inch
version of its Retina MacBook Pro laptop.
News of the announcement Tuesday helped give Apple’s stock a boost of 2.4%. Its stock
has been falling sharply since the release of the iPhone 5 last month. The timing of
the release not be entirely coincidental... Microsoft is set to release Windows 8 on October
26th.