It has felt like a lengthy wait for new iPads, with the most recent ones arriving in 2022. But the wait may soon be over, as two distinct sources predict that the iPad Pro 2024 and iPad Air 6 will be introduced on March 26.
Chinese leaker Instant Digital and Chinese website ITHome have both put this date forward, as reported by MacRumors, albeit the latter adds that cases for these tablets would allegedly begin to be offered on that date and appears to cite this as evidence for the March 26 launch date.
In any case, even if these tablets are announced on March 26, they may not ship until a later date, as Mark Gurman stated in his Power On newsletter that these tablets will ship with iPadOS 17.4, which will most likely not be completed until at least the end of March, after which it will need to be installed on these tablets. So they might not ship till the second half of April.
However, that does not preclude out an announcement on March 26, with pre-orders perhaps commencing soon after. Indeed, leaker Ross Young (via MacRumors) recently stated that the iPad Pro 2024 will be revealed in late March or early April and released in April.
The iPad Pro 2024, in particular, should be worth the wait, since sources say it will be the first of Apple’s tablets to have an OLED screen, along with a strong M3 CPU, a landscape-oriented front camera, and possibly even wireless charging via MagSafe.
A missing model
However, the iPad Air 6 may be rather disappointing, as the biggest rumored update was the addition of a larger 12.9-inch model, but according to leaker ShrimpApplePro, there will most likely only be a 10.9-inch version, as we presently have.
However, they base this on the lack of activity surrounding a 12.9-inch model being constructed in Vietnam, and they point out that this larger model may still be manufactured in China. So, while we wouldn’t count it out just yet, especially because this larger variant has been prominently leaked, they don’t appear to be persuaded that it will happen.
Aside from that, this source indicates that the iPad Air 6 will feature a landscape-oriented selfie camera but will not undergo any substantial design modifications. They also believe that one of the five colors available for the iPad Air (2022) (Space Gray, Starlight, Pink, Purple, and Blue) would most likely be discontinued with the new generation, with a new color replacing it.
As always, we recommend taking any of these reports with a grain of salt, but it appears that the iPad Pro 2024 and iPad Air 6 will be released soon.
