Recently unearthed registrations from Apple discovered earlier this week suggests that we may see a new iPad with a March release date.
While the exact release date of the new Apple iPad may still be up in the air, we have a pretty good sense of what is coming as well as when we’ll see it due to recently filed registrations with the Eurasian Economic Commission – an organization that regulates the sale of electronics products.
For better or for worse, different areas of the world have different requirements for products that are sold in their region. Ranging from content adjustments for video games released in China to outright bans of items in certain areas of the world, large companies like Apple have to cater to the needs of a variety of different markets if they want to get the new iPad into the hands of the maximum amount of consumers. The Eurasian Economic Commision is responsible for regulating the sales of electronics across Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Belarus, and Consomac reports that this organization requires that new products using encryption be registered before their release. Apple has since registered two products with the identifiers A1954 and A1893 – at least one of which is likely a new iPad.
The registrations at the Eurasian Economic Commission have given us our first look into the release of some previous products, such as when new MacBooks were to be released. We also had advanced notice of when the iPhone 7 and AirPods were to be announced as well. Generally, we see the registration around a month before release, so we should expect an official announcement and release date of the new iPad near the end of March.
Recent rumors have suggested that we are in for a revamp of the iPad Pro in the second half of 2018, which will reportedly copy some of the features from the iPhone X. With the massive success of the FaceID technology, Apple has proven that the market is desperate for innovation, so there’s a high likelihood we’ll start to see this feature on more and more of their products as they double down on this huge win. Because the release date of the new iPad from Apple is slated for the end of March, it’s more likely that the upcoming device will be a revamp of the last year’s more affordable iPad.
As far as expected features for the new iPad go, it’s likely that we won’t see much that is particularly revolutionary outside of a performance upgrade and perhaps a price bump. Whether or not it will be worth the upgrade from the most recent iPad upgrade remains to be seen, but with a simple increase in power without any notable new features, it might be worth waiting until later this year in order to take advantage of the new technology that is coming with the release date later this year for the new iPad Pro revamp. With that said, the new iPad Pro is going to be significantly more expensive than the price we’ll likely see from the upcoming regular iPad revamp, so it’s likely it will be competing for the attention of a different crowd.
With the holiday release date for the iPhone X, Apple brought something new to the table that we hadn’t even seen from a mobile device. While the company wasn’t the first to implement some sort of facial recognition technology, the innovative Apple FaceID technology gave us an adaptive, secure, and convenient way to unlock our devices. As a feature that can adapt to changes in appearance – such as the growth of facial hair, a hat, or a new pair of glasses – FaceID was significantly more advanced than the phone recognition we had had before, and even offered novel applications such as Animojis and AR applications. However, we’ve yet to see whether Apple will take the initiative to extend the same innovation we saw with FaceID to the rest of their ecosystem.
While it’s likely we’ll see FaceID on more and more Apple devices moving forward, it remains to be seen whether Apple will continue the positive momentum moving into 2018 with a March release date of the new iPad.
