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Although Apple has been mum over the whole thing, not deigning to confirm or debunk rumors regarding a mini iPad, a Samsung official has chose to confirm it on his own behalf. According to a report from The Korea Times, a Samsung official has said that Apple is planning to roll out a smaller iPad with 7.85-inch screen by the end of this year.

A 7.85-inch iPad will put Apple directly into the mini-tablet industry, too. We have been hearing from analysts that Apple may contemplate just such a move given Kindle Fire’s success. But even with this statement from an anonymous Samsung official, we have no official evidence that Apple is actually pursuing any such plans.

The official also remarked about the heated legal battle between Apple and Samsung over patents and stated despite all this, the collaboration between the two continues, “The amount of the current contract is around $9.7 billion. The 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, and to sell more of its MacBook Air PCs using Samsung’s faster solid state drive (SSD) storage.”

This new report about a 7.85-inch iPad comes close at the heels of another report from DigiTimes which stated that the prototypes of 7.85-inch iPad had been delivered to Apple and that Apple may ramp up the production volume of such a tablet by the third quarter of this year.

Image courtesy Tsubaki.

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