My current assumption is that this has to do with whatever "AI" Apple is planning to launch at WWDC. If they launched a new iPad with an M3 that wasn't able to

My current assumption is that this has to do with whatever "AI" Apple is planning to launch at WWDC. If they launched a new iPad with an M3 that wasn't able to sufficiently run on-device LLMs or whatever new models they are going to announce in a month, it would be a bad move. The iPhones in the fall will certainly run some new chip capable of on-device models, but the iPads (being announced in the Spring just before WWDC) are slightly inconveniently timed since they have to announce the hardware before the software.