Don’t Hold Your Breath for a $349 iPad This Month

Although Apple still has about a half a dozen products to launch this month, that’s expected to be the end of its roadmap for 2026, and one arguably overdue product that we’re not expecting to see is the entry-level iPad.

Despite rumors of its impending launch earlier this year, Apple’s fun-filled March releases came and went with no “iPad.”The first day of the busy week gave us the M4 iPad Air alongside the iPhone 17e, but the expected “iPad 12” was conspicuously absent.

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The prevailing theory at the time was that Apple didn’t want to overshadow the MacBook Neo. After all, it had just released the $599 laptop as a great solution for students, educators, and anyone else looking for a budget Mac. A $349 iPad would have seriously undermined this.

That’s especially true since the so-called “iPad 12” is largely expected to support Apple Intelligence. It was bad enough that the current iPad was released in early 2025 with an A16 chip, making it the only mainstream device in today’s product lineup that doesn’t support the company’s AI features. Not only does its successor pretty much have to rectify that on principle, but there’s really nowhere else to go from the A16 chip.

Many believed that the “iPad 12” had just been conveniently delayed by Apple to let the MacBook Neo have its time in the sun. But by the time Apple’s Q2 2026 earnings call rolled around, the company’s CFO hinted that we might be waiting a bit longer, implying that a new model definitely wasn’t going to show up in Q3 — the April to June timeframe.

Since Apple rarely releases new products in the summer, that left most assuming it would be pushed into the fall. A September release would put it at the end of Apple’s fourth quarter, while an October launch would put it into the “Q1” holiday quarter (Apple’s fiscal year runs October–September).

The rumor mill has been relatively quiet about the new iPad, leaving plenty of doubt as to whether it’s coming. It’s not uncommon for a basic entry-level product that’s slated for little more than a spec bump to fly below the radar, so we couldn’t rule out the possibility of a quiet October release, but Bloombergs Mark Gurman has just popped any remaining hopes by making it clear that the entry-level iPad is on next year’s roadmap.

Writing in his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman points to an online launch event during the last week of October, similar to 2024’s “Week of Mac,” noting that this will be the last product launch of the year — and it won’t include a base model iPad.

In fact, the only iPad that will be on deck is the new OLED iPad mini, which Gurman believes will also be “considerably more expensive” than the current model, possibly going up to $799. The current iPad mini already got a $100 price bump in June, so that would make the OLED model $300 more expensive than its 2024 predecessor’s launch price. That’s still less than half the price of the “foldable version” — aka the iPhone Duo — but it will be interesting to see what it does to demand for the new tablet.

Apple is expected to hold two product releases this month, with tomorrow’s Welcome Home event focused on a new “HomeView” smart home hub alongside a refreshed Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini, followed by a set of releases likely landing in the October 26–28 timeframe that will include the new touchscreen MacBook Pro alongside an M6-powered base 14-inch MacBook Pro and iMac.

The iPad mini is expected to be mixed into this with a new A20 Pro chip inside, but it’s possible Apple could slip that out more quietly via press release, as it did with the current model in 2024, which arrived in mid-October, two weeks ahead of the the “Week of Mac.”

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]