Today’s rumors (or “targets” as they’re calling themselves) is that the 7″ iPad will debut in October ’12, have a retina QXGA display, and be priced at $249.

My “target” has always been $299 for an 8GB non-retina 7″ iPad. While I’m not skeptical of Apple’s ability to sell at $249 and pack a retina display (after all, it would just be a larger cut of the screen used in the 4/4S) just for the sake of eating Amazon’s lunch, I am skeptical that they need to. It would sell just fine at $299 and their lineups don’t have a lot of *49’s in them. At either price we certainly can’t expect it to have 3G.

For those who say it would “cannibalize” iPod Touch sales:
Apple would be thrilled with that. They sell far more iPod Touch than iPad and converting those customers to iPad customers would make their market lead even more insurmountable.

I hope there’s at least an add-on price for 3G. I don’t need a jacket-pocketable iPad if it doesn’t have 3G. I do a lot of research and reading on my iPads while I’m out of the house. Oddly, when I’m home is when I play games and do other things that less require connectivity. I’d pay $399 for the 3G version. If there is no 3G option I’ll of course get one anyway, but I doubt I’ll find much use outside of development testing.