The rumours about a 7 inch variant of iPad tablet,  called “iPad mini”  and its launch on October 23 seem to be correct. Apple on Tuesday sent invitations to members of press to a event which will be held in on Tuesday, Oct. 23 at the California Theatre  in San Jose, California. The invite says: “We’ve got a little more to show you.”

Here is the rundown of the expected specs – 7.85-inch screen, powered by an A5 processor and 512MB of RAM, prices starting  from US $250 to $3o0, available in a week or two, with both Wi-Fi and 3G versions.

A smaller iPad would have been impossible to imagine couple of years ago, especially after Steve Jobs publicly opposed a tablet of that size, “While one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size,” Jobs said.

Popularity and acceptance of the 7-inch tablets have compelled Apple to come up with a smaller version of its tablet,  iPad mini will directly compete with  Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD tablet and Google’s Nexus 7, both of which have 7-inch screens and are priced at $199.