"Keep in mind too that Amazon still only sells the Kindle Fire in the US, and Google is only selling the Nexus 7 in three countries -- and outside the US it won't have music, magazines, or TV shows," Gruber continued. " Even if this iPad mini doesn't ship until October, Apple will likely beat Amazon and Google to market in much of the world."

No matter what the opinion, though, almost all of these industry experts have referred back to Steve Jobs' famous dismissal of a smaller iPad, in October 2012: "7in tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad. These are among the reasons that the current crop of 7in tablets are going to be DOA -- dead on arrival."

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