Apple’s new 9.7-inch iPad offers Pencil support for $329

CHICAGO—Apple today announced an updated version of the iPad—its cheapest yet, the company says. And the new device comes with a focus on education. The new iPad starts at $329 for general consumers, but educational institutions can get it for a little cheaper at $299. It's available to order today, and shipments start next week.

This new, 9.7-inch tablet closely resembles existing models. However, it adds support for the Apple Pencil peripheral, which was previously only supported on the iPad Pro. Apple will also release new versions of its productivity software Pages, Keynote, and Numbers to support the Apple Pencil.

Unfortunately, the Apple Pencil is not included with the iPad. It is available separately for $99. Apple also announced that numerous other accessories are coming to the iPad, including a $49 "Crayon" accessory from Logitech that is more affordable than the Apple Pencil.

The new iPad ships with Apple's A10 Fusion processor, an 8MP and FullHD camera, Touch ID support for authentication, and support for up to 300Mbps LTE connections. It also has a gyroscope and is built for AR, according to Apple. Apple will also offer 200GB of iCloud storage with the device, up from the 5GB offered previously—but this upgrade is only available to educational orgs.

The Wi-Fi model measures at 9.4 by 6.6 by 0.29 inches, and weighs just over one pound. It has a 2048-by-1536-pixel display (that's 264ppi). Apple hasn't said how much RAM it has.

The introduction of this iPad presents a perplexing dilemma for Apple's iPad Pro lineup. Apple Pencil support is one of the main selling points of those tablets, but now it's available at the bottom end, too. The iPad Pro still offers some differentiating features that are important to designers and other creative professionals, like a larger screen size, P3 Wide Color Gamut support, and a 120Hz refresh rate. The Pro models also feature the faster A10X processor.

But for a lot of users, the addition of the Apple Pencil is enough. Apple's iPad sales were slipping a few quarters ago, and it was partly the introduction of an iPad at a lower price point that improved sales. It's unusual to see Apple racing to the bottom like this—the company's business model is built on large margins in high-end products—but the dominance of Google-powered Chromebooks in the education market has forced Apple to adapt its usual strategy.

A recent Bloomberg report claimed that Apple has only a 17-percent share in the US education market versus Google's 60 percent and Microsoft's 22 percent. Apple hopes that bringing the iPad to a lower price point, while offering additional software features for education, will help the company regain ground it has lost in recent years.

This isn't the beginning of Apple's efforts to bring iPads into schools. In 2015, Apple worked with the Los Angeles Unified School District to equip all 640,000 of its students with iPads. However, students found the iPads difficult to type on, and school staffers were frustrated that kids managed to circumvent restrictions placed on the iPads to download unapproved apps or browse the Web freely. The program was halted before the rollout completed.