The late Steve Jobs used to mock 7-inch tablets, describing them as "tweeners." Is he spinning in his grave now that Apple just revealed the 8-inch iPad mini?

It has a 1024 x 768 display (not Retina, but same resolution as the iPad 2), is 7.2mm thick and, thanks to curving metal back, looks just like an overgrown iPod Touch. Construction remains in aluminium, unlike the majority of other 7-inch tablets.

The insides include a dual-core A5 processor, dual-band wifi/LTE wireless radios, 5MP rear-facing iSight camera and (of course) Lightning connector.

"It is every bit an iPad" Apple senior VP Phil Schiller remarks.

Still, we wonder-- is the iPad mini "too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad”? Or is the 7-inch segment, as represented by Amazon's Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7, taking over too much of a chunk from the lower end tablet market for Apple's comfort?

Mobility suppliers need to pay attention to the enterprise market, ABI Research reports-- forecasting mobile enterprise revenues will total $340 billion by 2017. 

The ABI data covers voice, messaging, handset data plans, mobile broadband and enterprise apps as well as management services revenues. 

According to the analyst enterprise revenues represent over 30% of the total mobile services market-- and "will grow twice as fast as the consumer market." The driver behind such growth? The BYOD trend (as coupled with smartphone adoption), of course.

Smartphone Read more...

HP has a take on the Windows 8 tablet aiming at enterprise use-- the ElitePad 900, a 10-inch tablet similar to high-end EliteBook laptops from the company. 

It carries an Atom-based Intel Clover Trail processor, 2GB of RAM and either 32 or 64GB of eMMC storage. The display handles resolutions of up to 1280 x 800, making it slightly disappointing, while cameras come in 1080p (front-facing) and 8MP (rear) varieties. 

Input is not limited to touch-- the device also allows for pen- and voice-based input. 

Like the EliteBook laptops the industrial design Read more...

HTC spends $35.4 million for a 17.1% stake in US-based enterprise mobility platform developer Magnet Systems, opening a door (or maybe a window) in the potentially lucrative bring-you-own-device (BYOD) market. 

"The investment will bring social, mobile, and cloud capabilities to HTC's portfolio of service offerings to its mobile enterprise customers," the HTC statement on the purchase says. Does the company want an iCloud rival, perhaps?

Magnet currently offers SalesWIN-- a mobile sales management for Android and iOS devices running on the Magnet Read more...