Steve Jobs was receptive to Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) making a smaller tablet, a senior executive said in a 2011 email revealed on Friday, fanning speculation that Apple plans to make a mini-iPad and take on Google and Amazon products.

Vice President Eddy Cue urged then-chief operating officer Tim Cook in January 2011 to build a 7-inch tablet, according to an email from Cue that Samsung Electronics introduced as evidence in a U.S. patent trial.

In an email addressed also to software chief Scott Forstall and marketing head Phil Schiller, Cue said he believed there was a market for a 7-inch tablet and that "we should do one".

Speculation intensified in 2012 that Apple is preparing to launch a 7-inch version of the market-dominating 10-inch iPad, to counter increasing inroads made by smaller tablets such as the Kindle Fire, and most recently, Google's Nexus 7. But the company has never confirmed such talk.