Apple just strongly hinted that one rumored product isn’t launching soon

Apple reported a hugely successful quarter yesterday, and while giving guidance for the next quarter, the company strongly implied that one specific new product is unlikely to launch very soon.

Base iPad with A18 chip likely won’t launch until later this year, per Apple CFO comments

Every quarter, Apple holds an investor call where it takes questions related to its earnings and future outlook.

Analysts often try asking questions about future products. And Apple leadership consistently shuts those queries down, almost never revealing anything about its future roadmap.

But on yesterday’s earnings call, there was one future product-related hint that Apple volunteered, completely unprompted.

During his opening comments, Apple CFO Kevan Parekh shared the following:

We expect our June quarter total company revenue to grow by 14 to 17% year-over-year, which comprehends our best view of constrained supply. 
On iPad, keep in mind, we face a difficult compare driven by the launch of the A16-powered iPad in the prior year.

Apple was rumored to launch a successor to the A16 iPad earlier this year, but it never materialized.

After a new iPad Air arrived in March but no base iPad (despite both releasing last March), reporting indicated that it was still coming soon. Mark Gurman wrote at Bloomberg, “it’s still coming this year, and the hardware is ready to go.”

However, Parekh’s comments imply that the A18 iPad won’t launch until July at the earliest—and likely later, since Apple tends not to launch new products during the latter part of the summer.

It’s always possible Apple could launch the new iPad sooner, and Parekh called out the “difficult compare” because the product would still arrive later than last year’s A16 model.

More likely though, Apple’s CFO singling out the difficult iPad compare means no new iPads are launching until later this year.

When do you expect Apple to launch its A18 iPad? Let us know in the comments.

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