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Jiam Calvert 10 mins ago · 2 min read
Will there be an iPad Pro mini?
Following the launch of the 9.7-inch Pro it’s now firmly established that the Pro brand doesn’t just refer to Apple’s biggest tablets — instead, it refers to a set of specs and features and, in a way that’s hard to define, any tablet that sits at the top of Apple’s range. If we accept that a 9.7-inch tablet can be an iPad Pro, could we get a 7.9-inch Pro as well? The highly respected securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo thinks so. In a recent report, Kuo predicted that there would be no more iPad updates in 2016, but that multiple new iPads would be launched in 2017. These will include a new inbetweener 10.5-inch iPad Pro, he reckons (as we discuss in the section above); and also a 7.9inch iPad Pro, displacing the iPad mini line. We could end up in a situation where every current iPad is branded as an iPad Pro, which would be a bit strange. The truth is that there’s no concrete reason why there can’t be a 7.9-inchiPad Pro 2, but for various reasons we still don’t expect Apple to do this. For one thing, unlike the Air line-up, the minis are still being updated; the mini 4 came out at the same event as the first iPad Pro, which suggests that Apple plans to keep both brands going at the same time. And besides, the Pro brand has always existed in opposition to a lower-end alternative: the MacBook Pro sits opposite the MacBook Air (and plain MacBook); the Mac Pro opposite the iMac; and so on. Apple can’t just call every tablet a Pro.
We’re starting to suspect that the Air brand may be phased out across Apple’s laptop and tablet departments, but there still needs to be two lines left in each of these areas. Apple still sell a MacBook Pro and a 12-inch MacBook, we expect; in the same way, we’d expect there to be iPad Pro models and iPad mini models. To read more about the iPad mini 5 — or theiPad Pro mini, if we’re wrong about this — then take a look at our iPad mini 5 rumour roundup. iPad Pro
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