New Report Ranks Apple’s Current iPad Models by Popularity
It’s no big secret that tablets are struggling pretty much everywhere, with global sales on the decline since the early pandemic boost waned, and you don’t have to look very hard on the internet to find a report (or ten) ranking Apple well ahead of all other vendors.
But if you’re wondering exactly which of the latest Cupertino-designed slates are the most popular, that appears to be a significantly harder to obtain piece of information. Or at least that was the case prior to today, when we have new Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) data to tell us that the 11-inch iPad Pro took home the title of best-selling member of its family in the April – June 2023 quarter.
We’re obviously talking about Apple’s newest high-end 11-incher, which was released almost a year ago with an M2 processor under its hood and a good old fashioned IPS LCD screen in tow. For some reason, this is proving considerably more successful than its predecessor, which came out in the spring of 2021 with an Apple M1 chipset and a very similar display on deck.
The somewhat inexplicable recent popularity of the iPad Pro 11 is coming (at least in part) at the expense of Apple’s 12.9-inch beast, which has massively declined in sales between Q2 2022 and Q2 2023. That might have something to do with the big guy’s mini-LED LCD panel, which was initially advertised as a substantial upgrade over a “conventional” LCD only to prove… not that different in real-life use.
Whatever may have caused this shift, we’re pretty sure Apple won’t mind seeing the iPad Pro duo command a much higher share of sales in 2023 compared to last year, which can only boost the tech giant’s profits even further.
In third place, the 10.9-inch iPad Air is probably slipping due to its slightly more advanced age than the newest iPad Pro generation, while the iPad mini is somewhat unexpectedly rising in fourth, edging out the “base” iPad despite the latter’s big 2022 redesign.
The 10.9-inch non-Air iPad, erroneously listed in the latest CIRP report as sporting a 10.2-inch screen, might have been hurt by its retail price, which was set too close to the Air and arguably not low enough to keep the best budget Android tablets out there at bay. It remains to be seen now exactly how and when Apple plans to expand and refresh its iPad portfolio, with all the recent silence on the matter strongly suggesting that no slates will be unveiled together with the iPhone 15 handset family next week.
