A customer visits the Apple Store in New York City's Grand Central Station. Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid
Perhaps the excitement about the upcoming 'iPad Mini' launch is confined to the tech industry as a survey released this week
suggests 50 percent of US consumers aren't interested and only 18 percent of respondents would consider buying one.
The survey, conducted among 1332 individuals in August by deal aggregation site TechBargins.com, shows that while 45 percent of people planned to buy the latest iPhone, of those who said that they would consider the 'iPad mini', only 14 percent would be prepared to stand in line to buy one on the day it is launched.
Most interestingly, those most willing to buy the iPad mini were existing iPad owners (27%), with Kindle Fire owners (16%)and those who do not yet have a tablet (16%) being the least likely to make a purchase.
This could be bad news for Apple, as many believe that its motivation for launching a smaller tablet is to stem the tide of competition from Google and Amazon, as well as offering a way into tablet ownership for consumers who found the original iPad line up too expensive.
When polled about the features they hoped it would have, 75 percent wanted it to have a memory card slot for expansion and 77 percent hoped it would have a Retina display, so there could be more disappointment in store as the latest rumors suggest that the tablet will have neither in an attempt to lower retail price.