While we were all waiting for Apple to take stage and announce the next-generation Apple tablet at the San Francisco event tomorrow, Samsung seems to have gone ahead and confirmed the existence of a 7-inch iPad Mini via an official Samsung Securities document. Given that Samsung has been known to supply displays for the past generation iPad models, it comes as no surprise that they would know this. The OLED-Display blog has the scoop, along with the full Samsung Securities document:
Samsung confirms 7-inch iPad Mini (may join iPad 3 in Q3 2012)
“Apple plans to sell more than 100 million iPads in 2012 and plans to use higher resolution IPS panels for the iPad3. Apple has not decide yet to use flexible panels in its next iPad models. The panel makers (Samsung Mobile Display) has to improve the resolution and have to be ready to mass produce so much panels. At the moment Samsung Mobile Display could produce only 54 million panels per year, if its 5.5G production line were fully used for tablet pc production. Samsung confirmed that they start mass production of flexible displays in 2012.”
If you don’t wish to skim through the lengthy official Samsung document, you can just jump to page 9 where Samsung confirms the existence of a 7-inch iPad Mini. The blog goes on to mention that the iPad Mini will likely be joining the iPad 3 sometime in Q3 2012. We’ll keep you posted as more develops and we will also be at the official Apple event tomorrow for the unveiling of the next-generation Apple tablet that is rumored to be either called the iPad 3 or iPad HD.
Source: Blog, Securities document
