The best football teams in the world not only play their own game, they also mark the opposition off the pitch – preventing them from playing THEIR game. While Apple's initial plan was to push the iPad Mini into stores for 12th December, that date has moved ahead of announcements from Amazon and Microsoft. KitGuru takes 3 tablets.

While phone screens are too small to share, the present iPad ‘3' design is too big to hold in both hands and type with your thumbs. Steve Jobs was unconvinced that there was a market for a smaller iPad, but with Apple's founder dead and buried for a year – the company's new bosses are looking at the market and deciding that, maybe, the old man was wrong.

Although Microsoft should provide a threat with Surface, its lack of content provision means that it barely registers as a threat for Apple's board. Amazon, on the other hand, is a completely different animal – with a vast array of post-hardware-sell-ins available.

Initially, Apple was going to launch the iPad Mini on 12th December around the £190 mark. Now, having seen the Kindle Fire preparations – as well as the huge sell through on iPhone 5 – Apple has decided to (a) announce the new product next week in order to completely steal Amazon's fire – with full scale production ramping up ahead of an in-store launch for the second week in November.

Pricing will now be closer to £239.

Although the info we have seen indicates that the product will be Wi-Fi only, the advent of brand new 4G and hugely improved 3G means that if Apple did decide on phone connectability, buying from the App Store and iTunes would be a very easy/cool experience.

KitGuru says:Any children with parents whose combined annual salary passes £50k will be in danger of getting one of these for Xmas. But can Apple make an argument for a product that, effectively, splits the ‘free' iPhone 5 (on contract with a SIM) and a brand new iPad 2 for £329. We're going out on a limb to say that this new market is not that big, but that the iPad Mini will provide ample ‘blocking' against the Surface and Fire assaults of its rivals.

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