Apple Now Wants To Top Up Sales With A Cheap iPad In 2018

After failing to excite the market with their new iPhone 8 Apple, who are also putting out software fires around their overpriced iPhone X, is now looking to flog a cheap iPad in 2018 which could be up to 30% cheaper than current models.

The brand-new iPad model which could have an OLED screen would be the cheapest iPad ever launched. Samsung already has an OLED tablet with their Galaxy Tab.

According to Digitimes, suppliers in Taiwan Apple is “considered a new, inexpensive 9.7-inch iPad priced at around US345 for 2018”. Given Apple’s pricing track record, we’d expect such a device to launch at around $599.

The report goes on to say that the decision is a result of Apple hoping to target a new market of price-oriented consumers, in order to maintain its 10 million-unit tablet shipments per quarter.

It’s also likely a response to increasing competition from rivals like Samsung, Amazon, Huawei and Lenovo, all of whom offer tablet options that are vastly cheaper than Apple’s fare. In fact, some Amazon-branded tablets dropped to as low as $59.00 over Black Friday – that’s an end of the market that Apple hasn’t even touched.

The new iPad is tipped to arrive in the second quarter of 2018, although no firm release date has been mentioned to date.

Last week Apple found themselves putting out software fires after yet another bug in Apple’s software caused problems for many device users, with apps that use local notifications causing their devices to crash as of Saturday.

Apple users took to the internet in their tens of thousands, to complain of the glitch, which affects those using the software version iOS 11.1.2, but only became an issue for users worldwide as of December 2

The temp fix is to manually set date/time to a date prior to 2 Dec. This will make some apps unusable due to date checks on server.

Local notifications refer to apps offering daily or repeat reminders based on the users’ time zone, such as mental health app Headspace, which has daily prompts.

It is not clear why December 2 was such a hurdle for Apple’s existing software, but the company was quick to smooth things over by offering a new software update.

To fix the problem

1. Open Settings, and then Notifications.

2. Tap an app, turn off All Notifications, and then repeat this step for each app.

3. Update the device to iOS 11.2 by opening General, and then Software Update.

4. After the device is updated, notifications ofr each app can be turned back on without causing any further issues.

The short-term fix is to simply set back the date on the device by a day, though to avoid any rage induced device hurling, this should only be a temporary solution until an update can be done.

About Post Author

David Richards

David Richards has been writing about technology for more than 30 years. A former Fleet Street journalist, he wrote the Award Winning Series on the Federated Ships Painters + Dockers Union for the Bulletin that led to a Royal Commission. He is also a Logie Winner for Outstanding Contribution To TV Journalism with a story called The Werribee Affair. In 1997, he built the largest Australian technology media company and prior to that the third largest PR company that became the foundation company for Ogilvy PR. Today he writes about technology and the impact on both business and consumers.