The Cupertino giant has decided to end the development of its long-awaited tablet with a flexible screen. The change of route comes shortly after the company recorded a commercial performance well below expectations for the iPad Pro line. During the last few months, the board reevaluated the portfolio of portable devices and concluded that the current market does not support equipment with such a high production cost, interrupting the project before it even reached the final phase of laboratory testing.

The strategic retreat has direct roots in the sharp drop in the sales volume of the brand’s most expensive tablets, which shrank between 15% and 18% in the recent fiscal cycle. Consumers who previously changed devices every two years are now extending the useful life of their equipment. This behavior is a direct reflection of the purchasing boom that occurred during the pandemic, which saturated the personal technology sector and reduced the urgency for annual hardware upgrades.

With basic units costing from R$7,500 on the Brazilian market and advanced versions exceeding the R$15,000 mark, the mainstream public moved away from the shelves. Without the necessary traction in traditional high-cost models, the financial math for an even riskier product no longer made sense. The company realized that investing billions in a niche category could compromise the overall profit margins of its portable hardware division.

On the same topic: Apple shelve foldable iPad project after falling Pro line sales

Technical and financial barriers that sank the flexible project

The manufacturer’s innovation laboratory dedicated around two years to testing the feasibility of a display that could be folded in half without losing image quality or presenting permanent creases. Engineers encountered severe physical obstacles, such as the difficulty in dissipating the heat generated by high-performance processors and the excessive thickness of the chassis when the device was closed. Furthermore, the durability of the hinge and battery consumption did not meet the rigorous quality standards required by the brand.

To place the equipment in stores, the company would need to inject more than US$1.2 billion just into adapting the assembly lines of its Asian suppliers. Passing on this logistical and manufacturing cost to the end consumer would make the price of the product jump to a range between US$2,500 and US$3,500. This value was considered prohibitive even for the high-end corporate segment, which tends to have more elastic budgets for technology.

Market research commissioned confidentially by the board showed a discouraging scenario for the innovative format. Only a small portion, ranging from 12% to 15% of current premium tablet owners, expressed a real intention to purchase a device with a foldable screen. Faced with this extremely restricted demand projection, shelving the prototype became the only logical solution to avoid commercial failure on a global scale.

Repositioning the current line and focusing on cutting-edge specifications

With the cancellation of physical innovation, the manufacturer redirects its energy to improving the hardware of existing rigid format models. The new internal guideline establishes that the iPad Air line will inherit features that were previously exclusive to the Pro family, seeking to attract university students and independent professionals who seek high performance without paying the maximum price charged for top-of-the-line equipment.

The objective now is to ensure that the next generation of conventional tablets delivers a significant leap in performance to justify the change of device by old users. For the next launches, the engineering schedule foresees the following structural updates:

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• Integration of the M3 processor optimized for greater data processing speed.
• Display panels with a 165 Hz refresh rate aimed at the audiovisual and gaming market.
• Redesigned camera modules to enable professional-grade captures in studios.
• Reduction of the chassis profile by 1.5 millimeters to improve ergonomics and daily transport.
• High-density batteries capable of providing up to 16 hours of continuous use away from the socket.

This list of improvements tries to compensate for the lack of a revolutionary design. The company is betting that the reliability of the system, combined with the raw power of the new chips, will be enough to maintain the loyalty of the most demanding users and recover some of the ground lost in the last fiscal year.

Competition advances in the corporate sector while Apple retreats

The withdrawal of the American giant leaves the way clear for Asian and North American rivals to consolidate their positions in the transformable device niche. Samsung, with the recent Galaxy Z Fold Tab, and Microsoft, through the Surface Duo line, continue to invest heavily to convince executives that extreme portability is worth the high investment. Advertising agencies, design studios and architecture firms that were waiting for Apple’s solution will need to look for alternatives to the competition or maintain their workflows on traditional tablets.

Another determining factor that weighed on the board’s decision was the imminent internal cannibalization of products. An ultra-expensive foldable tablet would compete directly with the brand’s own notebooks, especially the MacBook Air line, which perfectly suits those who need mobility, a physical keyboard and large screens. The information technology department of large corporations generally has a fixed annual budget, and forcing a choice between a consolidated laptop and an experimental tablet would harm the manufacturer’s overall financial statement.

Artificial intelligence replaces the physical design revolution

The company’s announcement calendar already reflects this drastic change in its stance on product development. A major event aimed at specialized press and content creators was scheduled for March 2025 at the headquarters in Cupertino. During the presentation, the board will reveal the new generation of rigid tablets and a renewed line of accessories, maintaining the current price list to try to recover sales volume and attract the public who have postponed their purchases.

Learn more: Apple launches iPhone 18 Pro with dynamic aperture camera and Ultra foldable debut

The real bet to convince consumers to open their wallet will not be the shape of the glass or aluminum, but rather the embedded software. The Apple Intelligence system has been elevated to a top priority category within software development labs and will make its definitive debut on Pro and Air models throughout 2025, transforming the way users interact with the operating system.

Native tools capable of generating images from text commands, automatic summarization systems for long documents and virtual assistants with deep context understanding will be the new sales attractions. The brand’s final strategy demonstrates that hardware has reached a plateau of physical innovation, transferring the responsibility for delighting the customer to neural processors and advanced algorithms.