A $1500 starting price for an OLED iPad Pro….

Ouch…..

We’re getting close enough to the supposed release date of the new iPad Pros that it feels like rumors should be given some credence. The negative reaction to this reminds me a lot of the reaction in 2016/2017 for the iPhone X. $999 for an iPhone? I remember my reaction being “there’s no way Apple is that out of touch”.

Well, it turns out they were. And they also knew what they were doing, because iPhone sales either stayed the same or got better.

But why did the iPhone go to $999? And why will the iPad Pro (probably) get a substantial price increase? I have some theories….

• Increasing Revenue – Let’s get the low hanging fruit out of the way first. Yes, Apple always trying to increase revenue and profit. They are indeed a for-profit company. The nice thing about the consumer tech market is that we, as consumers, get to vote with our dollars if we agree with the ways a company chooses to make money.
• Additional Features – Perhaps Apple sees the combination of OLED displays, an M3 chip, MagSafe, better cameras, an Always On Display and Standby Support as justification of a huge price increase? Idk, we’ve gone so long without a substantial hardware update, that seems unnecessarily punitive.
• Lengthening Upgrade Cycles – iPads have always had long and somewhat undefined upgrade cycles. What is the average upgrade cycle for an iPad anyway? 5 years? Longer if you only use it for watching video or web browsing? I can see the logic of collecting as much revenue as you can up front when the customer isn’t going to come back to you for awhile (if ever). This gets a little muddy with the whole 30% app store “tax”. I’m also not saying I agree with charging more. Not at all. I actually think it makes more sense for Apple to drop prices, relative to the Mac. The iPad appeals more to “the rest of us” and should be attainably priced.
• Aspirational Pricing? – I have absolutely no proof of this, but I have this theory that sometimes Apple prices products relative to the amount of value they think you’ll get out of them. The iPhone X going to $1000+ was reflective of more people using their phone as their main computer or main camera. One might surmise that more Mac-like pricing for iPad portends even more capability for the iPad Pro? Maybe big-ish things happening with iPadOS 18? (I say this somewhat in jest…I think we’re past the point where iPadOS needs some huge update that will bring tons of missing functionality. There isn’t “tons” of functionality missing, just more continued small improvements needed).
  

On the other hand, I hope this report is wrong, and the any price increase is more modest 🙂