Next year's iPad Pro: powerful 3nm M3 chip, OLED panels, new Magic Keyboard

Mark Gurman, the Bloomberg writer behind the weekly Power On newsletter, took last week off but has returned today to pass along some information about the upcoming revamped iPad Pro line. Expected next year, the new premium slates will feature an 11-inch model and a 13-inch model (compared to the current 11-inch and 12.9-inch offerings) and will sport OLED displays for the first time. The model numbers, according to Gurman, will be J717, J718, J720 and J721.

The report says that the next iPad Pro tablets are going to be powered by Apple's new 3nm M3 chip which should make them lightning fast. And Gurman says that he's been told that a new Magic Keyboard accessory will be made available and it will come with a larger trackpad. The size of the trackpad on the current version of the accessory has been often criticized by users,  It also will make the iPad Pro look more like a laptop than the current version of the Magic Keyboard.

Freshening up the iPad Pro could light a fire under Apple's iPad business which has cooled down sharply since the pandemic days. Back then, everyone from the guy working at home to the kids taking classes at home needed a tablet to work and unwind. During Apple's fiscal third quarter, iPad sales declined 19.8% year-over-year. 

The revenue generated by Apple's iPad division during the three months ended in June failed to come close to Wall Street's expectations. Apple blamed a tough comparison with a good fiscal third quarter it reported last year when it released the latest version of the iPad Air.

Consumers just do not see the urgency in updating their tablets as often as their phones, and larger-screened phones (along with the book-style foldables) are reducing demand for the product. As the creator of the category, Apple still has a solid 37% market share and the iPad continues to be the top-selling tablet.

In 2018, Apple released a video listing five reasons why the iPad Pro can be your next computer. Perhaps that was a valid comment for some people back then. Six years later, with the release of the 2024 iPad Pro models, even more consumers might be able to make the iPad Pro their new computer. But there is a long way to go before the iPad Pro can become everyone's next computer.