While many MWC 2014 attendees may have brought their iPads along, Apple did not have an official presence at the show, a regular “habit” for the company. However, the iPad Air, Apple’s latest flagship iOS tablet, won the Best Mobile Tablet award GSMA awards – last year, Google’s Nexus 7 (2012) won the same award.
“Precision-engineered to weigh just one pound, iPad Air is 20 percent thinner and 28 percent lighter than the fourth generation iPad, and with a 43 percent narrower bezel the borders of iPad Air are dramatically thinner,” the tablet’s description reads on the Global Mobile Awards site. “iPad Air’s Retina display makes web pages, text, images and video look incredibly sharp and realistic, and the new power-efficient A7 chip allows the battery to be even smaller, helping reduce the overall volume by 24 percent from the previous generation while doubling its performance and maintaining its up to 10-hour battery life.
Comments from the judges that decided Apple’s iPad Air is this year’s best mobile tablet have also been posted on the site. “The iPad Air packs class-leading performance in an attractive and svelte frame, while its ecosystem has an undisputed advantage in the number of format-optimized app,” judges said.
The iPad Air was launched in early November 2013, with the new Retina iPad mini following it a few weeks later. Apple reported 26 million iPad sales during the fourth quarter of last year, an all-time quarterly record for the company, with the iPad Air being a best-selling device during the period, according to unofficial estimates – Apple does not announce sales per device version, with the company’s Q4 2013 iPad lineup also including the iPad 2 and the 2012 iPad mini.
