Paul Morris on February 19, 2020, 7:15 pm

New 2020 12-Inch iPad Pro With Triple Cameras, 3D Sensor To Launch In March [Report]

Despite the ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and the slowdown of large parts of China’s manufacturing industry, new reports are corroborating earlier Bloomberg reports pertaining to a new 12-inch iPad Pro. If the speculation is accurate, we can expect the new iPad Pro series to be launched this coming March.

We’ve been hearing about this iPad for a while now, including the potential for it to include a brand new time-of-flight 3D sensor as part of its camera DNA.

With that said, this is ultimately the first time that a publication has referred to the speculated new iPad as an entirely new series, with DigiTimes referencing it as a new 12-inch model. Apple currently offers 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models.

Little is known about the rest of the features or hardware specification of the proposed tablet but most of the interest is being lavished on the potential inclusion of the aforementioned time-of-flight 3D sensor. This would give Apple’s new iPad the ability to measure distances and accurately put sizes to objects in the real world. If the new iPad does ship with that built-in hardware then it would be immediately evident that Apple is ready to take the next step forward as far as augmented reality experiences are concerned.

If so, it would also be highly likely that Apple’s next-generation iPhone models will also feature the same time-of-flight sensor. The same publication also suggests that Apple and its China-based manufacturing partners won’t be able to reach peak production of the new tablet until well into April, presumably due to capacity and manufacturing delays caused by the global COVID-19 alert. As China slowly returns to normal working operations, production of the new hardware would naturally ramp up to the point that Apple’s supply chain reaches full capacity to satiate global demand for the new tablet.

The hardware specification of the proposed iPad is definitely going to garner attention but the real question lies within whether or not Apple is yet again going to experiment with the screen size of the iPad Pro in order to try and find the sweet spot. We’ll be sure to bring you more on this as and when more information filters into the public domain.