Steve Jobs famously pooh-poohed the notion of a 7-inch iPad in 2010, doubting "the value of the product" and calling it "meaningless, unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of the present size." But the market has matured a bit since then. If nothing else, Amazon's Kindle Fire has proven that there is indeed a market for a 7-inch tablet, but the question remains whether Apple will finally put an end to the rumors and release a so-called iPad mini this year.

The biggest sticking point on the iPad mini is, without question, the screen. Demand will be off the charts, so whichever company supplies the display will have to manufacture a boatload of them. There are enough similar-sized tablets out there to suggest it wouldn't be a problem, so Apple seems to have options: Samsung all but confirmed Apple was exploring mass production of 7.85-inch AMOLED screens for the latter half of this year, and an official for the company reportedly told the Korean Times that Samsung's contract "is expected to rise to $11 billion by the end of this year as Apple is planning to release a smaller iPad, probably with a 7.85-inch screen." Plus, an earlier report by Economic Daily News had Apple in talks with LG for the same rumored 7.85-inch screen--so we're pretty sure supply won't be a problem (or, rather, any more of a problem than it is already).

What might cause trouble, however, is the resolution. Seven and 85-hundredths seems like an arbitrary number, but it's not. A.T. Faust III of App Advice did the math, and it seems that a 7.85-inch iPad is pixel-perfect: "A 7.85-inch tablet with a resolution of 1024 x 768 works out to a PPI of 163. ... That’s the exact same resolution as the pre-Retina iPhone/iPod touch display!"

What this means is iPhone apps will scale up and iPad apps will scale down without any headaches for developers. Of course, most will want to develop iPad mini-specific apps, but they won't have to have them ready from day 1, an important selling point. (And if you're thinking that iPad apps will be tough to use on a smaller screen, Faust dispelled that notion, too: "Whatever the size of a given menu option in a given iPad app, it cannot shrink beyond Apple’s pre-established minimum (163 PPI). It might take a bit more hand-eye coordination, but overall interaction should not be affected."

No one knows when (or if) Apple will pull the trigger on its fabled iPad mini, but we do know two things: It's sure to fit neatly into the iOS ecosystem, and it'll sell at least as well as its big brother.