I haven’t seen any pro analysts discussing the HomeKit factor, but I predicted last fall that IPad sales would go up with iOS 10 as HomeKit became more popular.
Can’t say for sure if that’s what happened, but lots of analyst articles this week on the surprising jump in iPad sales:
Education, China and Japan was the reason for increase sale of iPad apparently. Highly doubt these groups care about homekit but I could be wrong.
Thanks! As I understand it, there’s been some interest in HomeKit in Hong Kong and Macao, but almost none in mainland China. I don’t know about Japan one way or the other. 
No a major refresh with the new pros was the factor.
The official call didn’t specify whether the increase in sales came from the new basic model or the new pros. A lot of analysts were hoping to find that out but the information was not released.
If as @Navat604 said “education” was a factor, then that’s the new basic model, the pros weren’t available in that division.
CNBC stated:
In Apple’s earnings report, CEO Tim Cook said that “iPad was strong” in China, echoing similar remarks from earlier quarters. Cook also said there’s demand for the iPad Pro in the enterprise and a strong push for iPads in education.
Right, but they didn’t break out the numbers or give anything really definitive. You can interpret the remarks a lot of different ways.
Unit sales up 15% but dollars sales were only up 2%. That strongly suggests that the driving factor is the of the new iPad rather than the new iPad Pro. Both are fantastic products at the current price points although I think Apple is making a mistake ignoring the Mini and iPod Touch businesses. They are great sizes for a lot of use cases where an iPhone Plus isn’t a practical option like young kid and HA controllers.
Well, when you give away an iPad for $99 with every iPhone purchase (AT&T), I imagine your iPad sales would increase at least a fair bit.