An Apple Employee Waves A Rainbow Flag Before Marching In The San Francisco.
An Apple employee waves a rainbow flag before marching in the San Francisco Gay Pride Festival in California June 29, 2014. Thousands of Apple employees donned specially designed T shirts at the festival and marched in unison. This year's turnout was largest in the company's history, several Apple employees told Reuters. Reuters

Recent report from China states that the upcoming iPad Mini 3 will be 30% thinner than the iPad Mini 2. The report further adds that Apple could be calling this device as "iPad Mini Air" instead of "iPad Mini 3."

Notably, the predecessor iPad Mini 2 comes with a thickness of 0.30 inches or 7.5 mm. Therefore the upcoming iPad Mini 3 or iPad Mini Air will be 0.21 inches or 5.25 mm owing to the reported 30% reduction in thickness. Interestingly, the thinnest tablet with display size less than 10.1 inches is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 with a thickness of 0.25 inches or 6.6 mm, according to Phone Arena.

Also Read: Galaxy Tab S Encounters Overheating Problems

Furthermore, the next-generation iPad Mini 3 will be powered by the superior Apple A8 processor produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

If rumours were true, the 12.9 inches Apple iPad Pro might not be released until 2015. It is worth reminding that Apple's upcoming iPad series of devices include three variants the iPad Mini 3 (aka iPad Mini Air) with 7.9 inches display, the iPad Air 2 with 9.7 inches display and the iPad Pro with 12.9 inches display.

David Hsieh, Display Search's Vice President of the Greater China Region estimated that Apple's tablet sales slated for 2014 might continue to be the same as last year. The quoted reason is the stagnation caused by the pile up of whitebox tablets. In addition, the stagnation can also be attributed to the surge in the variety of tablets and phablets from Samsung available across the globe. The stand out point is that, Samsung caters to every type of buyer i.e. budget-friendly to high-end devices, says GForGames.

Moreover, news pertaining to Apple's Q3 earning report is just out. The company reported $37.4 billion in revenues and $1.28 per share in earnings. Apparently, the revenue was only slightly below the forecast of $38 billion. Even though iPhones did well, the iPad sales seem to be the problem area for Apple. In addition, the company marked 35.2 million sales that is 13% higher than 2013, but a tad lesser than the expected 36 million, according to Forbes.

As expected, Apple iPads sales was down again with only 13.3 million units sold as opposed to the 14.6 million sold during 2013. This translates to a 9% decrease from last year.

Quite Interestingly, Tim Cook, Apple CEO addressed media analysts a day before the Q3 announcement stating that he is "very bullish about the future of the tablet market," according to Apple Insider.

What do you think of the future of tablets? Will smartphones that look like phablets take over tablets? Feel free to leave a comment

Also Read

1. Apple Logo on iPhone 6 Might Double as Notification LED; Roughly 80M iPhone 6 Units Ordered Targeting Release Date - [Read]

2. Xiaomi Mi4 vs. Xiaomi Mi3 - Specifications, Features and Price Showdown - [Read]

3. Virgin Mobile USA (Sprint) to Offer HTC Desire 816, LG Pulse, LG Unify, and ZTE Emblem Shortly - [Read]

RELATED STORIES