Tablet sales to double with mini iPad

A research group is forecasting that sales of smaller tablets will double this year with the expected announcement of a mini iPad on Tuesday.

IHS iSuppli expects about 34 million smaller tablets will be sold worldwide in 2012, up from 17 million last year. IHS defines it as tablets with screens of about 7 inches diagonally. That includes Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble Inc.'s Nook Tablet and Google Inc.'s Nexus 7.

The research firm says sales should double again next year to 67 million.

As a percentage of all tablets, the smaller ones are expected to account for 28 percent of 2012 sales, compared with 24 percent in 2011.

Apple isn't saying anything about a smaller iPad, but it has an event scheduled in San Jose, California, on Tuesday.

Apple set to unwrap mini-iPad to take on Amazon, Google

Apple Inc is expected to make its biggest product move on Tuesday since debuting the iPad two years ago, launching a smaller, cheaper tablet into a market staked out by Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc .

Apple hopes to beat back their charge onto its home turf of consumer electronics hardware, while safeguarding its lead in the larger 10-inch tablet space that even deep-pocketed rivals like Samsung Electronics have found tough to penetrate.

Amazon's Kindle and Google's Nexus 7 have grabbed a chunk of the lower end of the tablet market and proved demand for a pocket-sized slate exists. That has forced Apple into a space it has avoided and at times derided, analysts say.

A smaller tablet would mark the first device to be added to Apple's compact portfolio under Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took over from co-founder Steve Jobs just before his death.

Apple sensed early that they had a real winner with the iPad and that has proven to be correct, said Lars Albright, co-founder of mobile advertising startup SessionM and a former Apple ad executive.

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