It has felt like a slow year for Apple announcements, with no spring event and only minor updates to the iPhone, Apple Watch, and Mac lines. (Partly this is because of the diversion of developmental resources to the imminent Vision Pro project.) But for one major and long-running product category, there have been no announcements at all, and it looks like that won’t change before the end of 2023.
In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg leaker Mark Gurman casually mentions that no iPads will be launched in the remainder of 2023.
“Apple hasn’t released a new iPad all year, the first time that’s happened since Steve Jobs launched the product in 2010,” he writes. “Apple could have tried to rush out more new products, but revamped iPads… aren’t yet ready. The company plans to update its entire iPad lineup during 2024.”
As Gurman notes, the iPad range–which was down 10 percent in the company’s most recent financial report, in a mark of its ongoing struggle to excite customers–has seen at least one new model added in every calendar year since it was first unveiled 13 years ago.
On that basis, it seems like something of a surprise for 2023 to reach its end without a single iPad announcement. But this isn’t the first time we’ve heard that there won’t be any new iPads this year. And in any case, it’s worth emphasizing that most iPads aren’t updated on a regular yearly basis the way iPhones are. Apple’s tablet refreshes are far more haphazard.
The Pro and Air models tend to appear once every 18 months or so, and on that timetable, the next iPad Pros aren’t due until spring 2024. The sixth-gen iPad Air is overdue, but not by much, and that model had a long hiatus between 2014 and 2019 and could be entering another… or could just be a little delayed. The iPad mini has now gone more than two years without a refresh and could be in a hiatus of its own, or could even have been discontinued.
The oddest absence is the 11th-gen iPad, since Apple’s cheapest iPad is the closest among its tablets to a regular annual refresh. But even here, there are precedents: there was an 18-month gap between the sixth and seventh models.
This isn’t exactly cause for alarm, in other words. As alluded to previously, Vision Pro is causing some slowdown in other areas, and 2022 was a relatively busy year for iPad releases. In that context it would only take a few minor delays to leave 2023 entirely iPad-free, and we hope Apple will make up of the shortfall early in 2024.
And we should also get new AirPods next year. Gurman says “new low-end AirPods” are set to launch in 2024.
