iPad mini goes on sale in UK; moderate excitement ensues

The launch of the iPad mini on Friday has attracted moderate queues in London, with fans lining up to get in early on the mid-sized tablet.

ZDNet's sister site CNET UK visited Apple's flagship store in Covent Garden early in the morning, to find what appears to have been a couple of dozen people waiting for the doors to open — not an insubstantial number, but not the scores of people that queued for mega-launches such as that for the iPhone 5.

"I did expect it to be slightly busier than this," one customer, who had been waiting since 3.30am, told the site. "I did an iPhone 4S event and we had to be ushered and split apart because it was overcrowded."

The iPad mini is the cheapest of Apple's tablets, starting at £269 for the 16GB, Wi-Fi-only model — 4G-enabled versions will go on sale later this month.

Those who buy the device through Apple's website will get free engraving, but will also have to wait two weeks for delivery.

Apple's new tablet has a 7.9-inch screen and, as such, is up against much cheaper devices such as Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD. The Nexus 7, for example, costs £169 but offers a much more powerful processor and better screen resolution (although the dimensions of the iPad mini's screen allow more content to be shown when browsing the web).