October iPad refresh hopes fade as analyst pours cold water on iPhone 15 day

News
By Oliver Haslam
published

Maybe that iPad Air refresh isn't happening after all.

iPad Air 5 with Magic Keyboard
(Image credit: Luke Filipowicz / iMore)

As the world gets ready for Apple to announce the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro today, one analyst has managed to deflate everyone with the news that we might not get all that many more announcements before the end of the year.

Rumors of a new iPad Air 6 launch for October had started to circulate, with Apple also expected to unveil new M3 Macs.  But now supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has poured cold water on hopes of new 2023 tablets altogether — a day after also suggesting that some expected M3 MacBooks won't arrive, either.

Now, Kuo says that we shouldn't expect a single iPad before the end of 2023.

No new iPads for you

Kuo was writing via a short and not-so-sweet post on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, when he dropped the bombshell. According to him, new iPad models are now "unlikely" before the end of the year, taking us into 2024.

We were already expecting the best iPads, the rumored OLED iPad Pros, to wait until 2024. The same was also rumored for the iPad Air 7, too. However, a recent report has raised hopes for a replacement for the current iPad Air. Now, those hopes have been quashed.

This all comes on a day when Apple excitement is ready to reach fever pitch with the new iPhones all but announced. They won't be alone, either. Apple is expected to unveil the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 during the same live-streamed event that will kick off in just a few hours from now.

You can of course watch the iPhone 15 event live online for yourself, but we'll be covering everything right here so you don't have to.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.