Apple plans to ship 4 million of its freshly-announced 9.7-inch iPad Pro, suggesting that sales of the company’s brand new tablet are projected to be promising — although this is unlikely to be the device which turns around Apple’s slowing iPad business.
Interestingly, the newly-announced price cut for the iPad Air 2 (which will drop to $399 to coincide with the new iPad Pro) will mean that it is expected to represent the largest portion of Pads shipped in the first half of 2016. The cheaper iPad Air 2 is, in turn, likely to have a negative effect on demand for the iPad mini 4.
Working out what percentage of total iPad shipments the iPad Pro’s 4 million represents isn’t easy, since Apple rarely breaks down its figures by product line. In the second quarter of 2015, Apple sold 12.62 million iPads in total. If the new iPad Pro ships (and then manages to sell) 4 million units on its own, those would represent some impressive numbers — at least by current iPad standards.
Will you be buying the new iPad Pro? Leave your comments below.
Source: Digitimes Research
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
2 responses to “Apple’s smaller iPad Pro expected to make promising sales start”
I’m still on the fence between picking up a 32gig iPad Pro and a 64gig iPad Air 2.
Canadian pricing for the iPad Pro starts at a mind-boggling $799. I’m not sure if its worth the extra money compared to the iPad Air 2 ($609 for the 64gig).
The 9.7″ iPad Pro has a CPU and graphics that are about 72% faster than the CPU and graphics that are found in the iPad Air 2.
The 9.7″ iPad Pro is significantly faster.