New iPads face very different competition When Apple unveils its latest iPads in San Francisco next week, it will launch them into a very different tablet market to last year. Apple remains the dominant force in tablets with 32 per cent of the market by unit shipments in the second quarter, according to market trackers IDC. But that is a far cry from the 60 per cent hold it had over its competitors a year earlier. These now include not just Samsung Electronic, Amazon and Google but dozens of cheap, no-name manufacturers, all of which run versions of the Android operating system. On top of that, retailers such as Tesco and Argos in the UK and Carrefour in France have followed Amazon into low-priced tablets that come preloaded with their media or ecommerce stores, enabling the hardware to be sold at or below its bill-of-materials cost. Even laggards such as Nokia and Microsoft, with its Surface, are now releasing the products needed to compete with new Windows tablets, also expected next week. That onslaught makes Apple's continued leadership all the more impressive, especially given that many analysts wrote off last year's iPad mini for being too expensive, at $329 and up, to compete with rivals costing $250 or less. The year-old mini now makes up around two-thirds of Apple's iPad sales, analysts estimate, likely making it the world's most popular tablet amid hundreds of alternatives. Nonetheless, Apple's continued dominance is no longer a given. "A shift in leadership is now upon the tablet mobile computing market," wrote analysts at ABI Research in a late-September report. During the second quarter of 2013, the number of Android-powered tablets surpassed iOS-based slates for the first time, tablet-related hardware revenues reached parity and, perhaps most important, the average selling price of iPad is rapidly approaching the market average. Many investors seem to be pinning their hopes on Apple bringing its high-resolution "Retina Display" to the iPad mini next week, bringing it in line with the rest of its iDevices. But analysts are split on whether Apple will be able to deliver. After the invitations to the San Francisco event went out, Wall Street analysts such as Barclays and RBC issued notes on Tuesday predicting that the iPad mini would come with the same Retina Display used in all the recent iPhones and 10-inch iPads, but with "production constraints" limiting availability in the run-up to Christmas. However, supply chain analysts at IHS say that component constraints seem likely to frustrate Apple's plans for a meaningful upgrade to its top-selling iPad before Christmas. Only one of the three companies tapped by Apple to provide displays for its tablets is ramping up production, creating an insufficient number of screens for a viable launch this year, says Rhoda Alexander, tablet analyst at IHS with a strong record of predicting the iPad's releases and sales. "They've started panel production for the Retina but that release probably won't come until March 2014," she predicts. Apple is unlikely to make the necessary trade-offs in weight, thickness or power consumption to release a higher-resolution screen sooner, as some of its competitors have, she adds. They won't rush to market with a product that's not well designed. The supply shortage looks set to leave Apple without the same quality of screen on its smaller iPad that is available on rivals such as Amazon's latest Kindle Fire, Samsung's Galaxy Tab and Google's Nexus 7. Apple retains an advantage in the quality of its App Store and iTunes content marketplace, which remains more popular on tablets than its rivals, but the gap is narrowing. "That was the place where the Apple device resonated originally and where it still resonates, but you've seen some very impressive competition from [Google's] Nexus and Samsung," says Ms Alexander. While the iPad mini may receive some incremental improvements or a price cut, next week's focus seems likely to be on its larger sibling: a new 10-inch iPad, thinner and lighter than its predecessor with an overall look akin to the iPad mini. Other iPad innovations could include the fingerprint reader or 64-bit processor that Apple added to the latest iPhone, improving security and boosting graphics capabilities. "That product, which was so cutting-edge when it was introduced, has started to look dated next to the competition," says Ms Alexander. We believe there is a significant audience for the larger tablet but [the iPad] needs to be streamlined.