iPad3? iPad mini? Or ePad for education?

So ever since the iPads introduction in 2010 people have spun rumours of smaller, cheaper 7" iPads supposedly being crafted deep down in (sir) jonny Ives Apple laboratory. So far these rumours have not come to fruition.

However, next Thursday whereApple have set a media event focussing on education, we might just see something along the lines of "iPad mini" arise.

Steve Jobs and apple had their sights set on the digital textbook and education market for the last few years. Jobs had visions of every school kid preventing early lower back problems by carrying around an iPad instead of a rucksack crammed with heavy textbooks.

Apple alsohas had a generally good link with education selling and has a history of doing good deals; education discount (practically the only discount they do!), cheap bulk sales of hardware and software as well as specialised computers for education institutes such as the aptly named emac and the continuation of the white polycarbonate MacBook. Overall leaving the company in good steadings with education institutes and giving it a good position to enter the education market.

So back to the business of selling iPads....

Every family can't afford to provide their children with an iPad for school. And schools certainly can't afford to kit kit out every class with a set of iPads. Not at their current price however.

Taking all that into consideration I'm predicting a cut cost iPad offered to the education market and ONLY the education market. Maybe not from next Thursday's event, but definitely in the not so distant future.

It makes sense. Say the company announces some amazing digital textbooks next Thursday and starts offering normal iPads to schools. In the US alone if 10% of schools kit out just one class with iPads, that's somewhere around 300,000 sales not including the revenue made from textbook sales.

Of course that might be an optimistic figure but even if 5% equip a classroom, if the textbooks are good quality and generate enough hype, every school is going to want to follow suit.

Enter the cut cost 'ePad' if you like. Probably not with a smaller screen (the kids need to be able see the thing right?!) but with less memory, a slower processor (who needs a quad core A6 for textbooks?) and defunct of useless features such as 3G and Gps, apple could have a low cost product that causes every school to throw their cash at apple.

Of course Apple might just keep selling old generation iPads to the education market at a lower mark up. Or I might be completely wrong and we see no increase in interest from the education market.

Time will tell.