iPad range – 2023 © Apple
In 2023, Apple has remained silent in the tablet market. This is quite simply the first year without a new iPad for Apple since the launch of its original model in 2010. The Apple firm should, however, make up for it during the year 2024, by offering new versions of all models. iPad, while adding a new variation. Mark Gurman, Bloomberg journalist, also focuses on these new versions, specifying in passing that the range would improve in readability.
A complicated iPad range for consumers
In his latest newsletter Power Onpublished this Sunday, December 10, Mark Gurman focuses on iPads, and realizes the following observation: consumers feel lost in the face of Apple’s wide range of tablets.
While the company offered few tablets in its early days, with a small and a large iPad model as well as previous year’s versions at a discount, the range is now gigantic. In 2023, the following models will be available on the Apple store: the iPad 10, the iPad 9, the iPad mini 6, the iPad Air 5, as well as the 12.9-inch and 11-inch iPad Pro M2 inches.
But all this came at a cost. The range has become cluttered and confusing. Between the different models and generations, the options menu [sur le site d’Apple] could even disconcert informed consumers.
The Bloomberg journalist thus evokes a wide range of iPads, with screen sizes “slightly different and similar features“, making it difficult to differentiate between each model. If we add to this accessories (keyboard and styluses) adapted exclusively to certain iPads, the choice becomes complicated again.
This complex lineup might have made sense if the iPad had supplanted the Mac as Apple’s primary computing device. But that never happened. In fact, the Mac has seen a surge in interest in recent years, thanks to technology spending during the pandemic and Apple’s faster in-house chips.
Towards a simplification of the offer in 2024
Faced with an understandable segmentation for the MacBook range, with two screen sizes for the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, but also very different performances and technologies, Mark Gurman explains that Apple “strives to bring the same clarity to the iPad”.
Thus, the American company would consider making the differentiation between the next iPad Pro and iPad Air less confusing. To do this, Apple would adopt a strategy similar to that of MacBooks:
- Two screen sizes: 11 inches and 12.9 inches for iPad Pro and 10.9 inches, 12.9 inches for iPad Air.
- Two panel technologies: Oled for iPad Pros, LCD for iPad Air.
- Two chips: M3 for iPad Pro, M2 for iPad Air.
Mark Gurman specifies that the two screen sizes and the M2 chip will also better differentiate the iPad Air from the 10th generation iPad.
He adds that when the iPad 11 is launched, probably at the start of the 2024 school year, the 9th generation will no longer be marketed – which will eliminate the 1st generation Apple Pencil, and replace it with the new USB model. vs.
While the next standard iPad would continue to offer an affordable solution perfect for education, the iPad mini would be retained and renewed by Apple in 2024 to continue offering a small tablet to consumers.
A big question is whether this simplification will be enough to reinvigorate the tablet category. In the short term, new models at higher prices will help generate more revenue. But in the long term, the return of the iPad is anything but assured, especially when the device will have to compete with touchscreen MacBooks in a few years.