Apple is working on a major overhaul to its iPad Pro lineup for 2024, its first major overhaul in half a decade, as the tablet category languishes in a prolonged doldrum.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
The product was once seen as a potential successor to the Mac, but now the iPad generates the least amount of revenue among Apple’s major segments.
This past quarter, sales slipped to the lowest level since the cusp of the pandemic in early 2020… Nearly every major manufacturer is suffering declines, including Samsung Electronics Co. and Lenovo Group Ltd. There’s just not much urgency among consumers to buy a tablet (or upgrade their perfectly functional old one).
Apple is still in better shape than most of the competition. It remains far and away the market leader in tablets, with 37% of shipments last quarter…
The good news is, Apple has its best chance in years to reinvigorate the market: an overhauled iPad Pro. The new model, due next year, will mark the first major update to the product since 2018.
The next iPad Pro models — codenamed J717, J718, J720 and J721 — will shift to the next-generation M3 chip. They will also be Apple’s first tablets with OLED displays, the same types of screens used on the iPhone since the X model in 2017.
The new models will come in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes. That’s similar to the existing lineup, but the larger model is currently 12.9 inches.
Something else coming with the new iPad Pro, I’m told, is a revamped Magic Keyboard. The new accessory makes the iPad Pro look even more like a laptop than the current setup and adds a larger trackpad.
MacDailyNews Take: The question is, will Apple’s best iPad ever – by a large margin – reinvigorate tablt sales for the world’s most valuable company?
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
iPad Pro is such a good product I haven’t needed to upgrade mine in years. I think I have a 3rd gen. It still feels snappy and modern when I use it, but the battery is starting to get weaker. Maybe this upgrade will be worthy.
A new Magic Keyboard would be welcome but hardware-wise nothing else will make a meaningful difference as much as continue software improvements. What we have now in the iPad OS 17 Beta should have been rolled out a year ago, or at the very least NOW. It gives me hope for the future of iPad and the eventual fusion of Mac OS with iOS/iPad OS, but it’s been way too late coming.
My usage of the iPad has skyrocketed in the 6 weeks since I’ve been using the Beta (feels like finished software) and I even bought a used 2021 M1 12.9″ to make better use of it over my 2020 11″. They need to get the latest iteration of Stage Manager on more non-Pro iPads. Unfortunately I think they’ll wait and only make it available on new models launched from here on out.