New iPad and Siri speaker again tipped to appear at WWDC in June

KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, a man with a better-than-average record at predicting which way Apple will go in the market, is confident that we'll see both the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro and the long-rumored Siri speaker unveiled at WWDC this June.

As 9to5Mac reports, Ming-Chi Kuo puts the chances of the iPad showing up at 70 percent, and the chances of Apple's Echo competitor appearing at 50 percent, so tailor your expectations accordingly. The claim does fit in with earlier rumors we've heard about both the tablet and the speaker.

WWDC, or the Worldwide Developers Conference, runs from June 5 to June 9 this year. The annual developer shindig is traditionally used to show off advancements in macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS, but the event has also been used to debut hardware before.

Talk to the touch panel

The revamped 10.5-inch iPad Pro, technically the third model in the series but effectively the iPad Pro 2, is said to be ditching the bezels down the side in order to cram a larger display into a chassis that's just about the same size as the 9.7-inch iPad Pro that got launched in March 2016.

Meanwhile Ming-Chi Kuo says the Siri speaker features a touch panel of some kind, though it's not certain whether that means an actual display (which would make more sense) or just an input panel. Amazon has recently been getting itself ready for increased competition in the market with the launch of the Amazon Echo Show.

The analyst also says Siri will get extra AI capabilities for managing your smart home at WWDC this year - so the new software and hardware could mark a fresh push into the smart home space from Apple. It sounds like the 2017 Apple developer conference is not to be missed this year, and we'll of course bring you all the news as it happens.