Apple has announced an event to take place on March 21st. Accompanied by the slogan 'Let us loop you in', it is widely expected to see the reveal of a four-inch smartphone (the iPhone SE) and a new 9.7 inch iPad (which is likely going to carry the iPad Pro branding).
Although Apple's PR team is going to have to work hard to avoid making the same mistakes with the iPhone SE that doomed the iPhone 5C to be seen as the 'cheap budget device' of the iPhone portfolio, I think the harder but more rewarding challenge will come with the new iPad.
Unlike the relatively short adoption and replacement cycles of modern smartphones, the tablet market has never reached the same level of turnover and revenue potential as was first hoped. Although there was modest growth in tablet sales over the last calendar year, IDC reports a year-on-year drop in sales during the fourth calendar quarter.
Into this mix steps the new iPad. Assuming Taniyama-Shimura, the next iPad willblikely sport a 9.7 inch screen (similar to the existing iPad Air line) and introduce technology from the larger 12.9 inch screened iPad Pro. Improved speakers, a smart keyboard connector, and support for the Apple Pencil are expected to be included. From the geekerati's point of view this new iPad is an easy pitch: it's a smaller version of the current iPad Pro and of course it's going to carry the same iPad Pro branding.
The challenge is not to get the message out to the geekerati, the challenge is to get the message over to the consumer. The challenge is to get consumers to feel that they need to upgrade an existing tablet to the new device. The challenge is to make a new tablet feel cool, relevant, and worth the investment.
Unlike smartphones, tablets are seen as a much more valuable long-term investment. With no subsidy model lowering the initial in-store price, a tablet may have similar hardware specifications to a smartphone but will be seen as three or four times more expensive. That sort of price differential has contributed to the tablet market acting more like desk-bound computers with the expectation that they would see many years of service.
When the main tablet use cases are for email, social networks, going online, and what used to be called personal information management, there's no need to keep a tablet up to date with the latest technology to perform these tasks. If you are happy with how your iPad 4 handles all of that, where is the drive to do a yearly update?
The one point where the increase in hardware between models might make a difference is in gaming. Tablets are becoming more popular for gamers. While that adoption lags behind smartphone gaming, it is on the rise and hard-core gamers are going to be looking at the high-end software for complicated. That's not the total tablet market, there's going to be a lot of Candy Crush players who don't need 3D performance and 60 frames per second rendering.
Bringing the features from the larger iPad Pro down to the 9.7 inch form factor offers iPad users some exciting features that you wouldn't normally expect to see with a bump in processor speed, memory, or Apple's exquisite skill in shaving another few millimetres from the thickness of the machine. Apple Pencil support is a tangible benefit that is easily explained and that the general consumer can relate to. It was a big selling point on the 12.9 inch tablet, and should hopefully do the same for the 9.7 inch form factor. The addition of the physical keyboard port will increase the flexibility and functionality of one of the most popular peripherals for a tablet. And with the iPad a popular multimedia consuming machine, the improved speakers should help sales.
This gives Apple's marketing team a few more tools to tell the story of the iPad in 2016. Relying on 'Smaller! Faster! More efficient!' is the domain of Android, Apple prefers to trade on emotions and experiences. Pens, keyboards, and increased creativity and consumption of media are far more in keeping with Cupertino's style.
The new iPad Pro offers something that Apple has rarely had - a genuinely new iPad product to market. The 12.9 inch iPad Pro was new, but its size and price point signposted a niche machine. That's not going to be the case with the new machine. It's going to be in a popular form factor, it's going to be a similar price to existing tablets, and it's a genuine opportunity for Apple to act on its key goal of getting Apple users to upgrade hardware during 2016.
Let's see if the marketing team can help deliver the spike in tablet sales that everyone is predicting.
