Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicts that, assuming the iPad mini is released on November 2, Apple will sell a minimum of 5 million of the smaller iPads in the December quarter, five times more the predicted one million ‘regular’ iPads to be sold in the same amount of time.
Originally, Munster predicted that 21 million iPads would be sold in total in the December quarter, but that figure has been raised to 25 million, now that the launch of an iPad mini is imminent.
Munster also reckons that iPad minis will account for a quarter of the expected 86.5-95 million total iPads to be sold in 2013, but because of the smaller model’s lower price, he expects that the average selling price for iPads to drop in 2013 to $497 from $527.
Munster seems to believe most of the rumors about the iPad mini, assuming that it will not feature a Retina display and will start at between $249 and $299 for a base model, 8GB model. However, he also believes that the majority of consumers will go for a mid-range, higher capacity model, so he sees an average selling price of around $350 to $360.
Apple is set to announce the device at its October 23 event, so everything that we need to know about the iPad mini will be announced in six days time. Personally, I can’t wait.
As somebody who never believes that the iPad mini would claw its way into reality, I’ll be interested to see how it turns out. And let’s face it, even if the iPad mini is an ugly, pointless and slow device, it probably will still meet Munster’s predictions.
