Apple drops the price on new iPads
Apple’s new iPads are now heavier but also more affordable.
The new devices, released in New Zealand last week, are mostly refreshes of existing models.
The company has dropped the name Air so it’s base model is now just the iPad. The 32GB model costs $539 while the 128GB model will cost $699.
It retains a 9.7-inch screen, but the display is brighter and the processor faster.
The 7.9-inch iPad Mini 4 now comes with 128GB of storage. It’s also had a price drop and goes on sale for $659. Apple is eliminating the 32GB model. Nothing else is changing.
Both new models are available now in New Zealand.
The prices above are for the wifi models. Devices that can connect to mobile networks cost about $200 more.
A much-speculated 10.5-inch iPad Pro didn’t materialise, nor did new versions of existing sizes in the Pro lineup, which is aimed at businesses and creative professionals.
If you’ve been thinking about treating yourself to something new and are intrigued by Apple’s announcements, here are some things to consider before you buy.
The strongest selling point for the new 9.7-inch iPad is its price. It has a retina display and comes in three colours: gold, silver and space gray.
The new iPad is a replacement for the iPad Air 2, so it’s best to think of it as a successor to that product – an in-between, easy-tocarry tablet for watching video and web browsing. It is about 20 per cent thicker than its predecessor but is still pretty trim at 467g.
The lower price tag comes with a few tradeoffs, however. It doesn’t have Apple’s latest processor but packs the same one from the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, meaning that it is a little slower than the latest iPhone. The new tablet also has no support for the Apple Pencil or Apple’s Smart Keyboard – those appear to still be reserved for the iPad Pro line.
That will probably be fine for most people. If you’re looking for a full laptop replacement, however, it’s probably not your best option.
Apple also upped the storage space on the iPad mini to 128GB, which could make the smaller tablet more appealing as a travel companion for watching video – if you don’t mind the price. The smaller size makes it a little more plane-friendly than a full-size tablet.
The iPad updates come as the tablet market continues to decline, after a few years of rapid growth.
According to IDC, tablet shipments fell 20 per cent to 53 million worldwide in the final three months of 2016, compared with the same period in 2015.
In the last three months of 2016, iPhones generated 10 times the revenue as iPads. Unit sales of iPads fell 19 per cent from the previous year. Yet Apple chief executive Tim Cook has expressed optimism because many people were buying iPads for the first time, indicating that the market had yet to reach saturation, the point at which everyone who wants a particular product already has one.
Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson agrees that the number of tablet owners is still growing, even if overall sales are declining because people aren’t upgrading often. He said the lower price for the 9.7-inch iPad should help spur sales.
He said the announcement makes it ‘‘even clearer that there are two very distinct iPad tiers now – the iPad Pro and the basic iPads. The iPad Pros will likely continue to get all the best new features, while the basic iPad will get occasional updates and new features a little later than the Pros, lagging a generation or two behind.’’ - Washington Post