Apple has generally held product announcement events every March, with the next-generation iPad lineup expected to take center stage in what would otherwise have been this year’s event, although Apple has yet to spill the beans.

Soruce: PAIXIN.com

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo indicated on March 18 that Apple’s current production volume and product quality have both met its own high specifications. Assembly lines for the Mini LED iPad Pro are expected to kick off mass production in mid- to late-April.

Kuo believes that OLED displays will first make an appearance in the entry-level and mid-range iPad Air lineups in 2022, while the high-end iPad Pro lineup will continue to feature Mini LED.

Kuo also claims that Apple has already invested considerable resources in Mini LED development, given that the company hopes to use Mini LED display technology as a point of differentiation among its various product lines. Apple is expected to release at least two lines of MacBook Pro equipped with Mini LED displays this year, with Mini LED-equipped MacBook Air to come in 2022.

Advancements in technology have made it clear that Apple will adopt Mini LED technology across an increasing proportion of its product portfolio. Kuo projects apple to ship about 10 million Mini LED devices in 2021 and anywhere between 20 million to 30 million Mini LED devices in 2022.

In addition to featuring new materials for its display panel, the new iPad Pro will have its SoC upgraded to the A14X Bionic chip, manufactured with 5nm process technology. The A14X is projected to boast performances rivaling those of the M1 chip found in certain new Macs, in turn making the new iPad Pro the most powerful iteration ever.

Thanks to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X55 modem, the new iPad Pro will be Apple’s first ever 5G-compatible iPad, this time equipped with at least 6GB of RAM and a maximum storage capacity of 1TB.

In terms of appearance, the new iPad Pro by and large plays it safe and sticks with its previous tried-and-true design formula: a borderless screen on the front and a rectangular dual-camera module equipped with a LiDAR scanner for AR functionalities on the top left corner on the back.