2012 has been an year where we continued to see plethora of Android devices getting launched every other day. But it has also been an year where we saw an unprecedented five major events hosted by Apple in a single year! Two of those were non-product launch events (iBooks event & WWDC 2012). And the other three were events to launch the mighty iPad 3 (I mean third generation iPad with retina display), the bigger iPhone 5 and finally the iPad mini along with the iPad 4 (or fourth gen iPad with lightning connector).

Along the way, we got to see a considerable shift in Apple’s policies.

• The first one, as I mentioned above, Apple found it apt to have three launch events in an year. Never has this happened before. That’s possibly because, Apple now considers iPad mini to be a brand new segment in their portable device arsenal and important enough to have its own introductory launch event.
• They have considerably shortened the iPad release cycle. The 3rd gen iPad was released barely 6 months back and we now have the 4th gen iPad. Though the changes are minimal, it still marks a change in Apple’s policy. I strongly believe Apple updated the bigger iPad only to ensure that they don’t have to have two separate launches for iPad and iPad mini from next year. So expect a holiday launch for upgrades of both the products from 2013.
• Apple finally conceded that iPhone’s screen size of 3.5 inches is probably small enough for most people. Funny thing is, it took them five long years and five iPhone iterations to realize that.
• This is the year, when Apple realized there is enough demand in the market for a smaller iPad. Almost 3 years (21 months to be exact) after the original iPad was released, Apple saw enough people who thought the iPad is big enough to hold in one hand and wanted a smaller version. Let’s conveniently forget for now that the first Android 7″ tablet was announced two years back (in Sep 2010) at IFA.

Awesome right? 2012 is that special year when Apple realized that people need a bigger iPhone and a smaller iPad [Mind you, smaller, not cheaper iPad].

“iPad Mini is a Concentration Not a Reduction.” – Jony Ive

Yeah right.