Apple Plots iPad Revival With Radically Revamped Pro Version Launch In 2024, Says Gurman: Next-Gen M3 Chip, OLED Display And More

Apple, Inc’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad, which is currently underperforming the tech giant’s other major product categories, will reportedly get its first major overhaul in half a decade. In the June quarter, iPad sales slipped to the lowest level since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.

Apple’s iPad Missteps: Softness around the Apple iPad is partly due to an across-the-industry softness and partly due to the company’s missteps, said Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman in his weekly “Power On” newsletter. The columnist noted that tablet sales of all major manufacturers, including Samsung and Lenovo, have declined following a post-COVID-19 surge.

“There's just not much urgency among consumers to buy a tablet (or upgrade their perfectly functional old one),” Gurman said, adding that most consumers now use larger-screen phones, ruling out the need of iPads.

Delving into company’s missteps, the tech writer said Apple has been making only minor iPad updates as of late and that the company has a confused lineup for the product category. To make his case, the columnist noted that the 11-inch iPad Pro and iPad Air are similar in size and appearance and that the extra $200 for the Pro version is for the Pro Motion, LiDAR, an M2 chip and a second camera — features, he said, aren’t compelling.

Gurman also noted that Apple’s products compete with one another, as the iPad competes with the Mac lineup, and the perplexing approach to the iPad software. “Stage Manager, which is meant to make it easier to multitask, can still be difficult to use. And Apple has been reluctant to bring more Mac-like functionality to the platform,” he said.

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Good iPad News Down Line The Line: Apple will likely launch an overhauled iPad Pro in 2024, marking the first major update to the product since 2018, Gurman said.

“The next iPad Pro models — codenamed J717, J718, J720 and J721 — will shift to the next-generation M3 chip,” the Apple writer said. 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, making the display crisper and brighter with more accurate colors, he said.

The new models, Gurman said, will come in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes. He also flagged the revamped Magic Keyboard, which will likely make the iPad Pro look more like a laptop than the current setup and adds a larger trackpad.

The columnist also expects the new models, which are not expected to be part of the company’s big launch scheduled next month, to give iPad sales a boost.

“I'm not anticipating anything other than minor updates to the company's other tablets before then,” he added.

Apple ended Friday’s session up 1.26% at $178.61, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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