Over the past week we touched on some of the iPad mini 2 release date predictions, or so-called insider leaks, and these have been laughable at times. Not all websites detailing upcoming Apple product launches carry the same credibility and one of the more solid names would be KGI and their analysts, but on this occasion we have to highly doubt their prediction for the iPad mini 2 launch.
KGI published some shipment predictions within the last 24 hours and these detailed some scheduled release windows for iPhone 5S, iPad 5, iMac with Haswell, a plastic iPhone 5 and also a Retina MacBook Pro with Haswell. What stood out for us was the fact that iPad mini 2 is missing from the release schedule for the rest of 2013, so in a nutshell KGI believe that the iPad mini 2 will not launch this year or they just don’t know.
Two things are clear about KGI’s (Ming-Chi Kuo) predictions — firstly, Apple won’t launch the iPad 5, iPhone 5S and so-called plastic iPhone 5 in September. You can count on the iPhone 5S or 6 seeing a release date that month, but Apple has a track record of not pushing out too many products at once and certainly not sharing its iPhone event with the iPad in 2013. They made this mistake in the past and had ordering problems on the Apple Store, so they wisely spread out major launches now by at least a few weeks.
The 3rd generation iPad launched in March 2012 and the iPad 4 saw a release date at the end of October 2012. The reason we saw a short lifecycle for iPad 3 was thanks to a major change to the charging/docking port, something Apple didn’t change since the original devices released years ago.
Apple launched the iPhone 5 in September last year and the iPad the month after, so you can almost certainly count on an iPad 5 not releasing in the same month as iPhone 5S. This is one important reason to doubt the predictions by KGI, and also adds to doubt over their predictions for iPad mini 2 not releasing in 2013.
In our opinion, after tracking iPhone/iPad launches since the first generation, you will see an iPad mini 2 launch this year as credible leaks and rumor point to this. One specification in doubt is a Retina display, but the real reason there is issues would be battery life. This is the very reason Apple left the Retina out of the original iPad mini, so it really boils down to improvements made with the battery on iPad mini 2 considering the form factor will likely keep at least the same thinness.
Bottom-line: Apple will launch the next iPhone at a dedicated event, so KGI is very wrong to predict the iPhone 5S and other products launching together in September. Other products like the iPad 5 and mini 2 will launch after September, and most likly in October as they did last year.