Apple's chief financial officer Luca Maestri has provided a clue that the iPad Pro might not be refreshed in 2019.
Speaking on Apple's earnings call this afternoon, Maestri said that Apple's revenue guidance for the holiday quarter accounts for the fact that the iPad Pro will have different launch timing on a year-over-year basis. Apple's holiday quarter runs from late September through the end of December.
In other words, while Apple refreshed its iPad Pro lineup in October 2018, Maestri is suggesting that there will not be another iPad Pro refresh until at least 2020 and that Apple has factored that decision into its guidance.
While multiple reports indicated that Apple planned to refresh the iPad Pro this October, it is unlikely with only one full day left in the month. One report did claim the iPad Pro will be updated in March 2020, a common month for an Apple event, and that timeframe is looking more likely in light of Maestri's comments.
The next iPad Pro models are expected to feature 3D sensing added to the rear-facing camera system, which could be expanded to three lenses like iPhone 11 Pro models. On a speculative note, the iPad Pro could also potentially beat iPhone 12 models to 5G, in line with the iPad gaining LTE support before the iPhone in 2012.
March 2020 would make sense given the 12.9-inch iPad Pro has been refreshed once every 18 months or so on average. A refresh this fall would have been around only 12 months after the October 2018 refresh. But, nothing is for certain.
Top Rated Comments
You’ll never convince me that it doesn’t hurt their sales now that we’re officially in the era where we’ve hit peak iPhone and iPad. I used to refresh my iPhone every other year. The only exception was going from the 5 to the 5s when Touch ID was released. That was a killer feature that demanded an upgrade. I stayed with the 6s until the iPhone X was released and unless something drastic changes I’ll probably have the X for at least 4 years.
I’ve owned an iPad 2, iPad Air and the 9.7” iPad Pro. From right out of the gate the iPad had a refresh cycle closer to that of a PC or laptop and less similar to early smart phone years where you could justify a yearly or bi-yearly upgrade cycle.
I think it kills sales because if your 5 or 6 months past that last iPhone or iPad release why would you pay to upgrade your device when you know your just a handful of months away from having a device that won’t be the latest and greatest?
Now that upgrade cycles are more in line with PC’s and laptops I’d want to keep consumers guessing so they don’t have a built in reason to hold off on a purchase.
As for OS releases Apple simply supports too many hardware revs of their various devices. When you’re dealing with supporting millions or tens of millions of devices with components sourced from from a relatively small number of vendors it’s a lot easier to produce OS code without bugs than it is when your dealing with hundreds of millions of devices with components sourced from an ever growing number of vendors.
Instead of a yearly OS release packed with new features they should release a yearly OS roadmap with the features they intend to release through out the course of the year. If a feature isn’t ready for prime time it should be withheld for a later point release or the next major OS release if it’s warranted.
I think too many managers jump the gun trying to hit specific dates for specific features and as a result there is a culture at Apple that’s more about putting features out there than there is about making sure the features that are already there are as stable as they can be and that new features aren’t released until they are truly ready.
If they aren’t willing to go that far then every other yearly release should focus less on new features and more heavily on fixing bugs and improving performance as they did with iOS 12.
the only reason they need to update it is to massage sales, as far as I can tell literally nothing you could do on an iPad really demands a beefier one? The closest competitors are miles behind. Software updates are what’s likely to change the iPad’s perceived usefulness.
they won’t change the design much. You’re presumably looking at maybe more ram across the board, a better camera and..? A slightly more reinforced frame maybe? More colours?