Apple to Rain on Nokia's Parade and Host New iPad Event on 22 October

Apple is expected to launch the iPad 5 and iPad mini 2 at an event on the same day Nokia is due to launch its latest smartphone.

According to website AllThingsD, citing "people familiar with Apple's plans" the company will host a media event on 22 October, where it will announce updates to both iPad models, as well as changes to the MacBook Pro line-up and the public launch of OS X Mavericks.

Should the report prove accurate - and the same website accurately predicted the date of the iPhone 5s and 5c launch last month - then it will a blow for Nokia, which is hosting a major media event on the same day in Dubia where it is widely expected to launch a large-screen Windows Phone device. The 22 Ocboter also marks the date when Microsoft starts selling the Surface 2 tablet.

Nokia's announcement is likely to be completely overshadowed in the media by Apple's announcement, underlining the seismic shift in the company's fortunes in the past five years.

Called Innovation Reinvented, Nokia's announcement is expected to feature the Lumia 1520, a 6in Windows Phone 8 device aimed at the 'phablet' market for handsets which fall somewhere between a large smartphone and small tablet. Alongside that, Nokia is also expected to announce its first Lumia tablet, which goes by the codename Sirius.

The location of Apple's event is not yet known, but going on past announcements it is expected to be held at either the company's own Town Hall Auditorium at its Cupertino headquarters, or at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Apple usually sends out invitations to the press a week in advance, so we are expecting these to arrive on 15 October, acting as the first official confirmation of the event taking place.

New iPads

Thanks to numerous leaks over recent months, Apple is widely expected to announce updates to the iPad range. The standard 9.7in model will see its first redesign in two years, shedding its wide bezels on either side of the screen and adopting a more angular form factor closely mirroring that of the iPad mini.

As for the smaller iPad, which is coming up to one year old, Apple is thought to be upgrading the screen to a Retina resolution, but recent reports from the company's supply chain suggest manufacturing delays with these panels could see a second-generation iPad mini delayed until early next year, missing the crucial Christmas shopping season and giving Apple nothing to compete with Amazon's new Kindle Fire HDX and the 2013 Google Nexus 7, both of which feature higher resolution screens than the year-old mini.

Both new iPads are expected to use the same 64-bit A7 processor as the iPhone 5s, as well as featuring the 5s's Touch ID fingerprint reader and gold, silver and grey colour options.

Mavericks

Elsewhere, we expect to see Apple talk about OS X Mavericks, the new Mac operating system first unveiled in June, which should get a public release date shortly after the 22 October event. The software was released to developers as a Golden Master version last week, signalling an imminent release to the public.

Alongside this, the MacBook Pro range could well see a small update, and professional users will be keen to hear more of the radical new Mac Pro, announced as a work-in-progress back in June.

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