Perhaps they are planning to launch application features that require or benefit from the A20. Anyway it looks like the base model of the new iPad is using binned CPUs that were not quite good enough for the iPhone 18: 5 cores instead of 6, 1 neural engine instead of 2.

That's not the same thing at all as "selling it as a Pro product". They just happened to put a chip in it which has "Pro" in the name, and which this press release accurately names. They're still selling it as an "iPad Mini" at the same segments and value props that they've always sold iPad Minis at.

And the "Pro" in the chip name doesn't mean anything anyway, "Pro" is actually the lowest-power suffix for A/M-series chips (behind "Max" and "Ultra").