Apple’s upcoming boost to its tablet sales, the iPad Mini 2, could be coming with a high-resolution “retina” display.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple will be using displays from LG, Sharp and Samsung—its often bitter smartphone rival—in the new iPad Mini, which is expected to arrive in the fourth quarter.
The new iPad Mini is expected to sport the same size 7.9-inch display but the retina will mark a significant resolution bump from the 1024-by-768 resolution (163 ppi) the original iPad Mini featured.
The original iPad Mini, released in November 2012, helped Apple’s tablet sales in the first quarter. IDC estimated Apple sold 19.5 million iPads in the first quarter compared to 11.8 million during the first quarter of 2012. IDC predicted that the iPad Mini accounted for more than 55 percent of those sales.
But Apple is still struggling to maintain market share for the tablet computer space it essentially launched in 2010 with the original iPad. In the same report, IDC said Apple controls 39.6 percent of the market, well down from the 58.1 percent it owned in 2012.
Ahead of the iPad Mini 2, Google has launched its own high-resolution 7-inch tablet with the follow-up to last year’s Nexus 7. The Nexus 7 2 shows up with a full-HD display and, at $230 for the 16 GB model, will likely cost much less than the iPad Mini 2.
